
Glass V5Liiiu__ 
Book ^4W. 



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THACKERAY'S WORKS.- Boston Edition. 



I. Vanity Fair, and Lovel the Widower. 
II. The Virginians. 

III. Pendennis. 

IV. The Newcomes. 

V. The Adventures of Philip, and Cath- 
erine. 
VI. Henry Esmond, Barry Lyndon, and 

Denis Duval. 
VII. Roundabout Papers, and The Four 
Georges. 
VIII. Burlesques, and^ Yellowplush Papers. 
IX. Paris and Eastern Sketches, and The 

Irish Sketch-Book. 
X. Christmas Books, and The Hoggarty 
Diamond. 




I J-SU-A R-N-LDS IN A DOMINO. Dk. G-LDSM-TH IN AN OlD ENGLISH DrESS.) 



THACKERAY'S COMPLETE WORKS 

ItUustratelf 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 

CRITICAL REVIEWS 

THE FOUR GEORGES 

THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS OF THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

SKETCHES AND TRAVELS IN LONDON 

^ BY 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 



^ uCT ; • 

PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1887 



A^^ 




CONTENTS. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Paob 

On a Lazy Idle Boy 3 

On Two Children in Black 9 

On Ribbons * 15 

On some late Great Victories 26 

Thorns in the Cushion 32 

On Screens in Dining- Rooms 39 

Tunbridge Toys 45 

De Juventute 51 

On a Joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood .... 63 

Round about the Christmas Tree 73 

On a Chalk-Mark on the Door 80 

On being Found Out 90 

On a Hundred Years Hence 96 

Small-Beer Chronicle 103 

Ogres , 110 

On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write . . . 117 

A Mississippi Bubble 126 

On Letts's Diary 134 

Notes of a Week's Holiday 142 

Nil Nisi Bonum 161 

On Half a Loaf — A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and 

Co., of New York, Bankers 168 

The Notch on the Axe. — A Story a la Mode. Part L . . . 176 

>> n »> j> >> 11* • * • ^"^ 

f> >» >» 91 >» III. ♦ . t X89 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

De Finibus 197 

On a Peal of Bells 205 

On a Pear-Tree 213 

Dessein's -'20 

On some Carp at Sans Souci 230 

Autour de mon Chapeau 236 

On Alexandrines — A Letter to some Country Cousins .... 245 

On a Medal of George the Fourth 252 

" Strange to say, on Club Paper " 260 

The Last Sketch 266 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 

I. On the Disinterment of Napoleon at St. Helena .... 273 

II. On the Voyage from St. Helena to Paris 284 

III. On the Funeral Ceremony 295 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

George Cruikshank 315 

John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character 351 



CONTENTS. 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 

Page 
George the First 3 

George the Second 27 

George the Third 48 

George the Fourth 72 



THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Swift 101 

Congreve and Addison 134 

Steele 166 

Prior, Gay, and Pope . 199 

Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding 237 

Sterne and Goldsmith 267 



r-i 



SKETCHES AND TRAVELS IN LONDON. 

Mr. Brown's Letters to his Nephew: — 301 

On Tailoring — and Toilets in General 305 

The Influence of Lovely Woman upon Society 309 

Some more Words about the Ladies 313 

On Friendship 318 

Mr. Brown the Elder takes Mr. Brown the Younger to a Club 326 

A Word about Balls in Season 338 



vi CONTENTS. 

Paoe 

A Word about Dinners 344 

On some oid Customs of the Dinner-Table 348 

Great and Little Dinners 352 

On Love, Marriage, Men, and Women 357 

Out of Town 368 

On a Lady in an Opera-Box 376 

On the Pleasures of being a Fogy 381 

Child's Parties 389 

The Curate's Walk 397 

A Dinner in the City 406 

Waiting at the Station 417 

A Night's Pleasure , 422 

Going to see a Man Hanged 442 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



-♦- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

pagh 

Sir J-gH-A R-N-LDS in a Domino, Dr. G-ldsm-th in an old 

English Dress 66 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 
M. GuizoT 

DOMK DE8 InVALIDES , , . t 

iVl .JLHIKRSt • • J* s » c • • • • 

MURAT .,.,.,. 

N'tOL.S:ON'8 F'UNERAL 



FOUR GEORGES. 

George I.* 

The Duke and Duchess op Marlborough . 

James II 

George II 

William Pitt — Lord Chatham 

George III 

George IV. . • 

Caroline refused Admittance to Westminster Abbey 
Naval Battle 

* Frontispiece to Cambridge Edition. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 
ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Page 
Milton ,.. 

King James at the Battle of the Boyne .... 173' 

Queen Anne 201" 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



KOU:^DABOUT PAPERS. 



ON A LAZY IDLE BOY. 



I HAD occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little 
old town of Coire or Chur, in the Orisons, where lies buried 
that very ancient British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* 
who founded the Church of St. Peter, on Cornhill. Few 
people note the church now-a-days, and fewer ever heard of 
the saint. In. the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears sur- 
rounded by other sainted persons of his family. With tight 
red breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a 
neat little gilt crown and sceptre, he stands, a very comelj^ 
and cheerful image : and, from what I may call his peculiar 
position with regard to Cornhill, I beheld this figure of 
St. Lucius with more interest than I should have bestowed 
upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, his 
superiors. 

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the 
world — of the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, 
and rushing railways, and the commerce and intercourse of 
men. From the northern gate, the iron road stretches awa}" 
to Zurich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. From the old south- 
ern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and around 
which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, 
the road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the 

* Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, " from the table fast chained 
in St. Peter's Chur'^^. Cornhill; and says, "he was after some chronicle 
buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at Glowcester " — but, 
oh ! these incorrect chroniclers ! when Alban Butler, in the " Lives of the 
Saints," V. xii., and Murray's "Handbook," and the Sacristan at Chur, all 
«ay Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb with my own eyei ! 



4 ' ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

shallow Rhine, through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and 
presently over the Splugen to the shores of Como. 

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, prett}', calm, and 
pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need have the 
inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to build summer- 
houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry on them? No 
enemies approach the great mouldering gates : only at morn 
and even the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens 
chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever- 
voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, 
with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the 
gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. There is 
one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentleman goes 
to it. There are shops with no customers seeminglj', and the 
laz}^ tradesmen look out of their little windows at the single 
stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of queer 
little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with 
half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there 
is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's nobody 
at the book-shop. " If you will have the goodness to come 
again in an hour," says the banker, with his mouthful of din- 
ner at one o'clock, "you can have the money." There is 
nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind waiters, 
the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is in the 
Protestant church — (oh! strange sight, the two confessions 
are here at peace !) — nobody in the Catholic church : until the 
sacristan, from his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies 
the traveller eying the monsters and pillars before the old 
shark-toothed arch of his cathedral, and comes out (with a 
view to remuneration possibly) and opens the gate, and shows 
you the venerable church, and the queer old relics in the sac- 
risty, and the ancient vestments (a black velvet cope, amongst 
other robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that 
notorious "pervert," Henry of Navarre and France), and the 
statue of vSt. Lucius who built St. Peter's Church, on Cornhill. 

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town! 
Has it been asleep these hundi'eds and hundreds of years, 
and is the brisk young Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his 
screaming car drawn by his snorting steel elephant coming to 
waken it? Time was when there must have been life and 
bustle and commerce here. Those vast, vcxierable walls were 
not made to keep out cows, but men-at-arms, led by fierce 
captains, who prowled about the gates, and robbed the trad- 
ers as they passed in and out with their bales, their goods, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ^ 

their pack-horses, and their wains. Is the place so dead 
that even the clergy of the different denominations can't 
quarrel? Why, seven or eight, or a dozen, or fifteen hun- 
dred years ago (they haven't the register at St. Peter's up to 
that remote period. I dare say it was burnt in the fire of 
London) — a dozen hundred years ago, when there was some 
life in the town, St. Lucius was stoned here on account of theo- 
logical differences, after founding our church in Cornhill. 

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take in the 
evening and mark the mountains round glooming with a 
deeper purple ; the shades creeping up the golden walls ; 
the river brawHng, the cattle calling, the maids and chatter- 
boxes round the fountains babbling and bawling ; and several 
times in the course of our sober walks we overtook a lazy 
slouching boy, or hobble-dehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers 
not too long, and big feet trailing lazily one after the other, 
and large lazy hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and 
in the lazy hands a little book, which my lad held up to his 
face, and which I daro say so charmed and ravished him, that 
he was blind to the beautiful sights around him ; unmindful, I 
would venture to lay any wager, of the lessons he had to learn 
for to-morrow ; forgetful of mother, waiting supper, and father 
preparing a scolding ; — absorbed utterly and entirely in his 
book. 

What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he 
stood by the river shore? Not the Pons Asinorum. What 
book so delighted him, and blinded him to all the rest of 
the world, so that he did not care to see the apple- woman 
with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve) the 
pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled 
round the fountain ! What was the book ? Do you. suppose 
it was Livy, or the Greek grammar? No; it was a Novel 
that you were reading, you lazy, not very clean, good-for. 
nothing, sensible boy ! It was D'Artagnan locking up Gen- 
eral Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles 
the First's head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'lf 
cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I men- 
tion the novels I Uke best myself— novels without love or 
talking, or any of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty 
of fighting, escaping, robbery, and rescuing) —cutting himself 
out of the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte Cristo. 
O Dumas ! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre ! I 
hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many 
pleasant hours. I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thir- 



6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

teen hours of a bapp}' da}', and had the ladies of the house 
fighting for the volumes. Be assured that laz}' bo}' was read- 
ing Dumas (or I will go so far as to let the reader here pro- 
nounce the eulogium, or insert the name of his favorite author) ; 
and as for the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of his 
schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender 
pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow 
cold — I don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No ! 
Figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter. 

Have 3'ou ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed 
warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of 
JaflTa or Beyrout, and listening to the story-teller reciting his 
marvels out of '' Antar" or the "Arabian Nights?" I was 
once present when a young gentleman at table put a tart away 
from him, and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son (with 
rather a fatuous air), " I never eat sweets." 

" Not eat sweets ! and do 3'ou know whj^?" says T. 

"Because I am past that kind of thing," sa^^s the young 
gentleman. 

"Because 3'ou are a glutton and a sot!" cries the Elder 
(and Juvenis winces a little). " All people who have natural, 
health}'' appetites, love sweets ; all children, all women, all 
Eastern people, whose tastes are not corrupted b}^ gluttony and 
strong drink." And a plateful of raspberries and cream disap- 
peared before the philosopher. 

You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people with 
healthy literary appetites love them — almost all women ; — a 
vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the 
most learned phj^sicians in England said to me only yesterdaj^, 
" I have just read So-and-So for the second time" (naming one 
of Jones's exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, 
mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers ; as well as young 
boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who 
has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every 
night when he was not at whist? 

As for that laz}^ naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether he 
will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking 
too great a glut of them now. He is eating jell}^ until he will 
be sick. He will know most plots by the time he, is twenty, 
so that he will never be surprised ^clr^^n the Stranger turns out 
to be the rightful earl, — when the old"\vat?rjT)?;,u, throwing off 
his beggarl}^ gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of his 
various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves him- 
self to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 7 

the novelist's same characters, though they appear in red- 
heeled pumps and ailes-de-pigeon^ or the garb of the nineteenth 
century. He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private 
schools grow (or used to grow, for I have done growing some 
little time myself, and the practice may have ended too) — as 
private school-boys used to grow tired of the pudding before 
their mutton at dinner. 

And pray what is the moral of this apologue ? The moral 
I take to be this : the appetite for novels extending to the end 
of the world ; far away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading 
them to one another during the endless night ; — far away under 
the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and elders hearkening to 
the poet as he recites his tales ; far away in the Indian camps, 

where the soldiers listen to 's tales, or 's, after the 

hot day's march ; far away in little Chur yonder, where the 
lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all 
his e^^es ; — the demand being what we know it is, the merchant 
must supply it, as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bom- 
bay or Calcutta. 

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will dis- 
agree with him ; and so surely, dear youth, will too much novels 
cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel-writers themselves read 
manj^ novels? If you go into Gunter's, 3'ou don't see those 
charming young ladies (to whom I present my most respectful 
compliments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper eventide 
they have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. 
Can anybody tell me does the author of the ' ' Tale of Two 
Cities" read novels? does the author of the " Tower of Lon- 
don " devour romances ? does the dashing ' ' Harry Lorrequer " 
delight in " Plain or Ringlets" or " Sponge's Sporting Tour?" 
Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the books 
which delighted our young days, " Darnley," and " Richelieu," 
and "Delorme,"* relish the works of Alexandre the Great, 
and thrill over the "Three Musqueteers ? " Does the accom- 
plished author of the " Caxtons" read the other tales in Black- 
wood'^ (For example, that ghost-story printed last August, 
and which for my part, though I read it in the public reading- 
room at the ' ' Pavilion Hotel " at Folkestone, I protest fright- 
ened me so that I scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does 
" Uncle Tom" admire " >^Jam Bede ; " and does the author of 

* By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the veteran 
novelist! He was appointed her Majesty's Consul-General in Venice, the 
only city in Europe where the famous " Two Cavaliers " cannot by any 
possibility be seen riding together. 



8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



the "Vicar of Wrexhill" laugh over the "Warden" and the 
" The Three Clerks?" Dear 3"0uth of ingenuous countenance 
and ingenuous pudor ! I make no doubt that the eminent 
parties above named all partake of novels in moderation — eat 
jellies — but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast 
and boiled. 

Here, dear youth aforesaid ! our Oomhill Magazine owners 
strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction ; and though 
it does not become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least 
thej' invite thee to a table where thou shalt sit in good com- 
pan3^ That story of the " Fox" * was written b}^ one of the 
gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful 
Arctic Night : that account of China t is told b}^ the man of all 
the empire most likely to know of what he speaks : those pages 
regarding Volunteers % come from an honored hand that has 
borne the sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the 
British guns in the greatest siege in the world. 

Shall we point out others? We are fellow-travellers, and 
shall make acquaintance as the voj^age proceeds. In the 
Atlantic steamers, on the first day out (and on high- and holy- 
days subsequently), the jellies set down on table are richly 
ornamented ; medioque in fonte leporum rise the American and 
British flags nobly emblazoned in tin. As the passengers re- 
mark this pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt improves 
the occasion by expressing a hope, to his right and left, that 
the flag of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float 
side by side in friendly emulation. Novels having been pre- 
viously compared to jellies — here are two (one perhaps not 
entirely saccharine, and flavored with an amari aliquid very 
distasteful to some palates) — two novels || under two flags, the 
one that ancient ensign which has hung before the well-known 
booth of ' ' Vanity Fair ; " the other that fresh and handsome 
standard which has lately been hoisted on ' ' Barchester Towers." 
Pray, sir, or madam, to which dish will you be helped? 

So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain Corn- 
stock press their guests to partake of the fare on that memorable 
" First day out," when there is no man, I think, who sits down 
but asks a blessing on his voj^age, and the good ship dips over 
the bar, and bounds away into the blue water. 

* " The Search for Sir John Franklin. (From the Private Journal of 
an Officer of the ' Fox/) " 

t " The Chinese and the Outer Barbarians." By Sir John Bo wring. 

X " Our Volunteers." By Sir John Burgoyne. 

II "Lovel the Widower" and "Framley Parsonage." 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. 

Montaigne and " Howel's Letters" are my bedside books. 
If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to 
sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don't 
weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and 
over again. I read them in the doz}^ hours, and onl}^ half re- 
member them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse 
stories. I don't heed them. It was the custom of their time, 
as it is of Highlanders and Hottentots to dispense with a part 
of dress which we all wear in cities. But people can't afford to 
be shocked either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time 
the}' meet an individual who wears his national airy raiment. I 
never knew the ' ' Arabian Nights " was an improper book until 
I happened once to read it in a "family edition." Well, qui 
s' excuse. . . . Who, pray, has accused me as 3'et? Here am I 
smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, before she 
has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of 
hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the 
Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King- 
Charles's Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I 
hope I shall alwa3'S like to hear men, in reason, talk about 
themselves. What subject does a man know better? If I 
stamp on a friend's corn, his outcrj' is genuine — he confounds 
my clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about 
himself and expressing his emotion of grief or pain in a manner 
perfectly authentic and veracious. I have a story of my own, 
of a wrong done to me by somebody, as far back as the year 
1838 : whenever I think of it and have had a "couple of glasses 
of wine, I cannot help telling it. The toe is stamped upon ; the 
pain is just as keen as ever : I cry out, and perhaps utter im- 
precatory language. I told the story only last Wednesday at 
dinner : — 

" Mr. Roundabout," says a lady sitting by me, " how comes 
it that in your books there is a certain class (it may be of men, 
or it may be of women, but that is not the question in point) — 
how comes it, dear sir, there is a certain class of persons whom 
3^ou always attack in 3'our writings, and savagely rush at, goad, 
^oke, toss up in the air, kick, and trample on?" 

I couldn't help m3' self. I knew I ought not to do it. I told her 
the whole story, between the entrees and the roast. The wound 



10 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

began to bleed again. The horrid pang was there, as keen and 
as fresh as ever. If I live half as long as Tithonus,* that crack 
across my heart can never be cured. There are wrongs and 
griefs that can't be mended. It is all very well of j^ou, ni}^ dear 
Mrs. Gr., to say that this spirit is unchristian, and that we 
ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I forget at 
will ? How forgive ? I can forgive the occasional waiter who 
broke m}- beautiful old decanter at that ver}^ dinner, I am not 
going to do him any injmy. But all the powers on earth can't 
make that claret-jug whole. 

So, you see, I told the lady the inevitable story. I was ego- 
tistical. I was selfish, no doubt ; but I was natural, and was 
telling the truth. You sa}^ you are angry with a man for talk- 
ing about himself. It is because you yourself are selfish, that 
that other person's Self does not interest you. Be interested 
hy other people and with their affairs. Let them prattle and 
talk to you, as I do my dear old egotists just mentioned. 
When 3'ou have had enough of them, and sudden hazes come 
over your eyes, lay down the volume ; pop out the candle, and 
dormez Men. I should like to write a nightcap book — a book 
that you can muse over, that you can smile over, that you can 
yawn over — a book of which you can sa}', " Well, this man is 
so and so and so and so ; but he has a friendly heart (although 
some wiseacres have painted him as black as bogey), and you 
may trust what he says." I should like to touch you sometimes 
with a reminiscence that shall waken your sympathy, and make 
you say, lo anche have so thought, felt, smiled, suffered. 
Now, how is this to be done except by egotism ? Linea recta 
hrevissima. That right line " I" is the very shortest, simplest, 
straightforwardest means of communication between us, and 
stands for what it is worth and no more. Sometimes authors 
say, " The present writer has often remarked ; ". or " The under- 
signed has observed;" or " Mr. Roundabout presents his 
compliments to the gentle reader, and begs to state," &c. : but 
" I " is better and straighter than all these grimaces of modesty : 
and although these are Roundabout Papers, and may wander 
who knows whither, I shall ask leave to maintain the upright 
and simple perpendicular. When this bundle of egotisms is 
bound up together, as they may be one day, if no accident pre- 
vents this tongue from wagging, or this ink from running, 
they will bore you very likely ; so it would to read through 
"Howel's Letters" from beginning to end, or to eat up the 

* " Tithonus," by Tennyson, had appeared in the preceding (the 2nd) 
number of the Comhill Magazine, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 11 

whole of a ham ; but a slice on occasion may have a relish : a 
dip into the volume at random and so on for a page or two : 
and now and then a smile ; and presently a gape ; and the book 
drops out of your hand ; and so, hon soir, and pleasant dreams 
to you. I have frequentl}^ seen men at clubs asleep over their 
humble servant's works, and am alwaj's pleased. Even at a 
lecture I don't mind, if they don't snore. Only the other day 
when my friend A. said, "You've left off that Roundabout 
business, I see ; very glad you have," I joined in the general 
roar of laughter at the table. I don't care a fig whether Archi- 
lochus likes the papers or no. You don't like partridge, Ar- 
chilochus, or porridge, or what not? Try some other dish. I 
am not going to force mine down your throat, or quarrel with 
you if you refuse it. Once in America a clever and candid 
woman said to me, at the close of a dinner, during which I had 
been sitting beside her, " Mr. Roundabout, I was told I should 
not like 5^ou ; and I don't." " Well, ma'am," says I, in a tone 
of the most unfeigned simplicit}^ " I don't care." And we 
became good friends immediatel}-, and esteemed each other ever 
after. 

So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and 
say, " Fudge ! " and pass on to another, I for one shall not be 
in the least mortified. If 3'ou say, " What does he mean by 
calling this paper On Two Ohildren in Blacky when there's noth- 
ing about people in black at all, unless the ladies he met (and 
evidently bored) at dinner, were black women? What is all 
this egotistical pother ? A plague on his I's ! " My dear fellow, 
if 3^ou read " Montaigne's Essa3's," you must own that he might 
call almost any one by the name of any other, and that an essay 
on the Moon or an essay on Green Cheese would be as appro- 
priate a title as one of his on Coaches, on the Art of Discours- 
ing, or Experience, or what 3^ou will. Besides, if I have a 
subject (and I have) I claim to approach it in a roundabout 
manner. 

You remember Balzac's tale of the Peau de Chagrin^ and 
how ever}^ time the possessor used it for the accomplishment of 
some wish the fair}^ Peau shrank a little and the owner's life 
correspondingly shortened? I have such a desire to be well 
with m}' public that I am actually giving up my favorite stor3\ 
I am killing m3^ goose, I know I am. I can't tell my stor3' of 
the children in black after this ; after printing it, and sending 
it through the country. When the3^ are gone to the printer's 
these little things become public propert3\ I take their hands. 
I bless them. I say, " Good-by, my little dears." I am quite 



12 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

sorry to part with them : but the fact is, I have told all my 
friends about them already, and don't dare to take them about 
with me any more. 

Now every word is true of this little anecdote, and I submit 
that there lies in it a most curious and exciting little m3^ster3\ 
I am like a man who gives you the last bottle of his '25 claret. 
It is the pride of his cellar ; he knows it, and he has a right 
to praise it. He takes up the bottle, fashioned so slenderly — 
takes it up tenderl}^ cants it with care, places it before his 
friends, declares how good it is, with honest pride, and wishes 
he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine in his 
cellar. Si quid novisti^ &c., I shall be ver}^ glad to hear from 
you. I protest and vow I am giving you the best I have. 
■ Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall never 
probabl}^ know to my dying day. They were very pretty little 
men, with pale faces, and large, melancholy eyes ; and they 
had beautiful little hands, and little boots, and the finest little 
shirts, and black paletots lined with the richest silk ; and they 
had picture-books in several languages, English, and French, 
and German, I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking 
little men I never set e3^es on. They were traveUing with a 
very handsome, pale lady in mourning, and a maid-servant 
dressed in black, too ; and on the lady's face there was the 
deepest grief. The little boys clambered and played about the 
carriage, and she sat watching. It was a railway-carriage from 
Frankfort to Heidelberg. 

I saw at once that she was the mother of those children, and 
going to part from them. Perhaps I have tried parting with 
m}' own, and not found the business very pleasant. Perhaps I 
recollect driving down (with a certain trunk and carpet-bag on 
the box) with my own mother to the end of the avenue, where 
we waited — only a few minutes — until the whirring wheels of 
that ' ' Defiance " coach were heard rolling towards us as cer- 
tain as death. Twang goes the horn ; up goes the trunk ; 
down come the steps. Bah ! I see the autumn evening : I 
liear the wheels now : I smart the cruel smart again : and, bo}' 
or man, have never been able to bear the sight of people part- 
ing from their children. 

I thought these little men might be going to school for the 
first time in their lives ; and mamma might be taking them to 
the doctor, and would leave them with man}^ fond charges, and 
little wistful secrets of love, bidding the elder to protect his 
3'ounger brother, and the younger to be gentle, and to remem- 
ber to pray to God alwa3's for his mother, who would pray for 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 13 

her boy too. Our party made friends with these young ones 
during the little journey ; but the poor lady was too sad to talk 
except to the bo3^s now and again, and sat in her corner, pale, 
and silentl}^ looking at them. 

The next daj^, we saw the lady and her maid driving in the 
direction of the railway-station, without the hoys. The parting 
had taken place, then. That night they would sleep among 
strangers. The little beds at home were vacant, and poor 
mother might go and look at them. Well, tears flow, and 
friends part, and mothers pray every night all over the world. 
I dare say we went to see Heidelberg Castle, and admired the 
vast shattered walls and quaint gables ; and the Neckar running 
its bright course through that charming scene of peace and 
beauty ; and ate our dinner, and drank our wine with relish. 
The poor mother would eat but little Abendessen that night ; 
and, as for the children — that first night at school — hard bed, 
hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing, and jarring 
you with their hateful merriment — as for the first night at a 
strange school, we most of us remember what that is. And 
the first is not the worst, my boj^s, there's the rub. But each 
man has his share of troubles, and, I suppose, you must have 
j'^ours. 

From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden : and, I dare say, 
saw Madame de Schlangenbad and Madame de la Cruchecassee, 
and Count Punter, and honest Captain Blackball. And whom 
should we see in the evening, but our two little bo5^s, walking 
on each side of a fierce, yellow-faced, bearded man ! We 
wanted to renew our acquaintance with them, and they were 
coming forward quite pleased to greet us. But the father pulled 
back one of the little men by his paletot, gave a grim scowl, 
and walked away. I can see the children now looking rather 
frightened away from us and up into the father's face, or the 
cruel uncle's — which was he ? I think he was the father. So 
this was the end of them. Not school, as I at first had imag- 
ined. The mother was gone, who had given them the heaps of 
pretty books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and the pretty 
silken clothes, and the tender — tender cares; and they were 
handed to this scowling practitioner of Trente et Quarante. 
Ah ! this is worse than school. Poor little men ! poor mother 
sittino- bv the vacant little beds ! We saw the children once 
or twice after, always in Scowler's company ; but we did not 
dare to give each other any marks of recognition. 

From Baden we went to Basle, and thence to Lucerne, and 
so over the 8t. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we went to 



14 ' ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Venice ; and now comes the singular part of my story. In 
Venice there is a little court of which I forget the name : but 
in it is an apothecarj^'s shop, whither I went to buy some 
remedj^for the bites of certain Stnimals which abound in Venice. 
Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, fl3'ing ani- 
mals ; all three will have at 3'ou at once ; and one night nearl}' 
drove me into a strait- waistcoat. Well, as I was coming 
out of the apothecary's with the bottle of spirits of hartshorn 
in my hand (it really does do the bites a great deal of good), 
whom should I light upon but one of my little Heidelberg-Baden 
bo}' s I 

I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long as 
they were with their mother.^ When I saw the boy at Venice, 
who perfectlj' recognized me, his only garb was a wretched 
3'ellow cotton gown. His little feet, on which I had admired 
the little shin}' boots, were without shoe or stocking. He looked 
at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his hand ; and 
with her he disappeared down one of the thronged lanes of the 
city. 

From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railwaj' at that 
time was onl}' opened as far as La3"bach, and the magnificent 
Semmering Pass was not quite completed). At a station be- 
tween La3'bach and Graetz, one of m}' companions alighted for 
refreshment, and came back to the carriage sa3'ing : — 

" There's that horrible man from Baden, with the two little 
bo3^s." 

Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the 
little bo3' at Venice, and his strange altered garb. M3^ com- 
panion said the3^ were pale, wretched-looking, and dressed quite 
shabbily. 

I got out at several stations, and looked at all the carriages. 
I could not see my little men. From that day to this T have 
never set eyes on them. That is all my story. Who were 
they ? What could they be ? How can you explain that mys- 
tery of the mother giving them up ; of the remarkable splendor 
and elegance of their appearance while under her care ; of their 
barefooted squalor in Venice, a month afterwards ; of their 
shabby habiliments at Lay bach? Had the father gambled 
away his money, and sold their clothes ? How came they to 
have passed out of the hands of a refined lad3' (as she evi- 
dentl3^ was, with whom I first saw them) into the charge of 
quite a common woman like her with whom I saw one of the 
boys at Venice ? Here is but one chapter of the stor}'. Can 
an}^ man write the next, or that preceding the strange one on 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, 15 

wMch I happened to light? Who knows? the mysterj^ may 
have some quite simple solution. I saw two children, attired 
like little princes, taken from their mother and consigned to 
other care ; and a fortnight afterwards, one of them barefooted 
and like a beggar. Who will read this riddle of The Two 
Children in Black ? 



ON RIBBONS. 

The uncle of the present Sir Louis N. Bonaparte, K.G-., 
&c., inaugurated his reign as Emperor over the neighboring 
nation by estabhshing an Order, to which all citizens of his 
country, military, naval, and civil — all men most distinguished 
in science, letters, arts, and commerce — were admitted. The 
emblem of the Order was but a piece of ribbon, more or less 
long or broad, with a toy at the end of it. The Bourbons had 
toys and ribbons of their own, blue, black, and all-colored ; 
and on their return to dominion such good old Tories would 
naturally have preferred to restore their good old orders of 
Saint Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel ; but France had 
taken the ribbon of the Legion of Honor so to her heart that 
no Bourbon sovereign dared to pluck it thence. 

In England, until very late days, we have been accustomed 
rather to pooh-pooh national Orders, to vote ribbons and crosses 
tinsel gewgaws, fooUsh foreign ornaments, and so forth. It is 
known\ow the Great Duke (the breast of whose own coat was 
plastered with some half-hundred decorations) was averse to 
the wearing of ribbons, medals, clasps, and the like, by his 
army. We have all of us read how uncommonly distinguished 
Lord Castlereagh looked at Vienna, where he was the only 
gentleman present without any decoration whatever. And 
the Great Duke's theory was, that clasps and ribbons, stars 
and garters, were good and proper ornaments for himself, for 
the chief officers of his distinguished army, and for gentlemen 
of high birth, who might naturally claim to wear a band of 
garter blue across their waistcoats ; but that for common people 
your plain coat, without stars and ribbons, was the most sensi- 

ble wear. 

And no doubt you and I are as happy, as free, as comforta- 
ble ; we can walk and dine as well; we can keep the winters 
cold out as well, without a star on our coats, as without a 



16 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

feather in our hats. How often we have laughed at the absurd 
mania of the Americans for dubbing their senators, members of 
Congress, and States' representatives. Honorable. We have a 
right to call our Privy Councillors Right Honorable, our Lords' 
sons Honorable, and so forth ; but for a nation as numerous, 
well educated, strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare 
to give its distinguished citizens titles of honor — monstrous 
assumption of low-bred arrogance and parvenu vanit}^ ! Our 
1 titles are respectable, but theirs absurd. Mr. Jones, of Lon- 
don, a Chancellor's son, and a tailor's grandson, is justly 
Honorable, and entitled to be Lord Jones at his noble father's 
decease : but Mr. Brown, the senator from New York, is a silly 
upstart for tacking Honorable to his name, and our sturdy 
British good sense laughs at him. Who has not laughed (I 
have myself) at Honorable Nahum Dodge, Honorable Zeno 
Scudder, Honorable Hiram Boake, and the rest? A score of 
such queer names and titles I have smiled at in America. 
And, mutato nomine'^ I meet a born idiot, who is a peer and 
born legislator. This drivelUng noodle and his descendants 
through hfe are yowx natural superiors and mine — 3'our and 
my children's superiors. I read of an alderman kneeling and 
knighted at court : I see a gold-stick waddling backwards be- 
fore Majesty in a procession, and if we laugh, don't you suppose 
the Americans laugh too? 

Yes, stars, garters, orders, knighthoods, and the like, are 
foll}^ Yes, Bobus, citizen and soap-boiler, is a good man, and 
no one laughs at him or good Mrs. Bobus, as they have their 
dinner at one o'clock. But who will not jeer at Sir Thomas on 
a melting daj'^, and Lady Bobus, at Margate, eating shrimps in 
a donkey-chaise? Yes, knighthood is absurd : and chivalry an 
idiotic superstition : and Sir Walter Manny was a zany : and 
Nelson, with his flaming stars and cordons, splendent upon a 
day of battle, was a madman : and Murat, with his crosses and 
orders, at the head of his squadrons charging victorious, was 
only a crazy mountebank, who had been a tavern- waiter, and 
was puffed up with absurd vanit}^ about his dress and legs. 
And the men of the French line at Fonteno}^ who told Messieurs 
de la Garde to fire first, were smirking French dancing-masters ; 
and the Black Prince, waiting upon his YOjdl prisoner, was 
acting an inane masquerade : and Chivahy is naught ; and 
Honor is humbug ; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct foll}^ ; 
and Ambition is madness ; and desire of distinction is criminal 
vanity ; and glory is bosh ; and fair fame is idleness ; and 
nothing is true but two and two ; and the color of all the world 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 17 

is drab ; and all men are equal ; and one man is as tall as 
another ; and one man is as good as another — and a great 
dale betther, as the Irish philosopher said. 

Is this so ? Titles and badges of honor are vanity ; and in 
the American Revolution you have his Excellenc}'' General 
Washington sending back, and with proper spirit sending back, 
a letter in which he is not addressed as Excellency and General. 
Titles are abolished ; and the American Republic swarms with 
men claiming and bearing them. You have the French soldier 
cheered and happy in his dying agony, and kissing with frantic 
joy the chief's hand who lays the little cross on the bleeding 
bosom. At home you have the Dukes and Earls jobbing and 
intriguing for the Garter ; the Military Knights grumbling at 
the Civil Knights of the Bath ; the little ribbon eager for the 
collar ; the soldiers and seamen from India and the Crimea 
marching in procession before the Queen, and receiving from 
her hands the cross bearing her royal name. And, remember, 
there are not only the cross wearers, but all the fathers and 
friends ; all the women who have prayed for their absent heroes ; 
Harry's wife, and Tom's mother, and Jack's daughter, and 
Frank's sweetheart, each of whom wears in her heart of hearts 
afterwards the badge which son, father, lover, has won by his 
merit ; each of whom is made happy and proud, and is bound 
to the country by that little bit of ribbon. 

I have heard, in a lecture about George the Third, that, at' 
his accession, the King had a mind to establish an order for 
literary men. It was to have been caUed the Order of Miners^a 
— I suppose with an Owl for a badge. The knights were to 
have worn a star of sixteen points, and a yellow ribbon ; and 
good old Samuel Johnson was talked of as President, or Grand 
Cross, or Grand Owl, of the society. Now about such an 
order as this there certainly may be doubts. Consider the 
claimants, the difficulty of settling their claims, the rows and 
squabbles amongst the candidates, and the subsequent decision 
of posterity ! Dr. Beattie would have ranked as first poet, and 
twenty years after the sublime Mr. Hayley would, no doubt, 
have claimed the Grand Cross. Mr. Gibbon would not have 
been eligible, on account of his dangerous freethinking opinions ; 
and her sex, as well as her republican sentiments, might have 
interfered with the knighthood of the immortal Mrs. C'atharine 
Macaulay. How Goldsmith would have paraded the ribbon at 
Madame Comely s's, or the Academy dinner ! How Peter 
Pindar would have railed at it ! Fiftj^ years later, the noble 
^cott would have worn the Grand Cross and deserved it ; but 



18 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Gifford would have had it ; and BjTon, and Shelley, and 
Hazlitt, and Hunt would have been without it ; and had Keats 
been proposed as officer, how the Torj'^ prints would have yelled 
with rage and scorn ! Had the star of Minerva lasted to our 
present time — but I pause, not because the idea is dazzling, 
but too awful. Fancy the claimants, and the row about their 
precedence ! Which philosopher shall have the grand cordon ? 

— which the collar ? — which the little scrap no bigger than a 
buttercup? Of the historians — A, say, — and C, and F, and 
G, and S, and T, — which shall be Companion and which Grand 
Owl? Of the poets, who wears, or claims, the largest and 
brightest star? Of the novelists, there is A, and B and C D ; 
and E (star of first magnitude, newl}^ discovered), and F (a 
magazine of wit), and fair G, and H, and I, and brave old J, 
and charming K, and L, and M, and N, and O (fair twinklers), 
and I am puzzled between three P's — Peacock, Miss Par- 
doe, and Paul Pry — and Queechy, and R, and S, and T, mere 
et Jils, and very likely U, O gentle reader, for who has not 
written his novel now-a-days ? — who has not a claim to the 
star and straw-colored ribbon ? — and who shall have the biggest 
and largest ? Fanc}^ the struggle ! Fancy the squabble ! Fancy 
the distribution of prizes ! 

Who shall decide on them? Shall it be the sovereign? 
shall it be the Minister for the time being? and has Lord 
Palmerston made a deep study of novels ? In this matter the 
late Ministrj^,* to be sure, was better qualified ; but even then, 
gi'umblers who had not got their canary cordons, would have 
hinted at professional jealousies entering the Cabinet ; and^ the 
ribbons being awarded. Jack would have scowled at his because 
Dick had a broader one ; Ned been indignant because Bob's 
was as large : Tom would have thrust his into the drawer, and 
scorned to wear it at all. No — no : the so-called literary 
world was well rid of Minerva and her yellow ribbon. The 
great poets would have been indifferent, the little poets jealous, 
the funn}^ men furious, the philosophers satirical, the historians 
supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity 
and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes 

— and take for granted the Order of Minerva is estabhshed — 
who shall have it ? A great philosopher ? no doubt we cordially 
salute him G.C.M. A great historian? G.C.M. of course. 
A great engineer ? G.C.M. A great poet? received with ac- 
clamation G.C.M. A great painter? oh! certainly, G.C.M. 

* That of Lord Derby, in 1859, which included Mr. Disraeli and Sir 
Edward Bulwer Lytton. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 19 

If a great painter, why not a great novelist? Well, pass, great 
novelist, G.C.M. But if a poetic, a pictorial, a stor3'-telling or 
music-composing artist, why not a singing artist ? Why not a 
basso-profondo ? Why not a primo tenore ? And if a singer, 
why should not a ballet-dancer come bounding on the stage 
with his cordon, and cut capers to the music of a row of deco- 
rated fiddlers ? A chemist puts in his claim for having invented 
a new color ; an apothecary for a new pill ; the cook for a new 
sauce ; the tailor for a new cut of trousers. We have brought 
the star of Minerva down from the breast to the pantaloons. 
Stars and garters ! can we go any farther ; or shall we give the 
shoemaker the yellow ribbon of the order for his shoetie ? 

When I began this present Roundabout excursion, I think I 
had not quite made up my mind whether we would have an 
Order of all the Talents or not : perhaps I rather had a hanker- 
ing for a rich ribbon and gorgeous star, in which my family 
might like to see me at parties in my best waistcoat. But then 
the door opens, and there come in, and by the same right too. 
Sir Alexis Soyer ! Sir Alessandro Tamburini ! Sir Agostino 
Velluti ! Sir Antonio Paganini (violinist) ! Sir Sandy McGuffog 
(piper to the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh) ! Sir Alcide 
Flicflac (premier danseur of H. M. Theatre) ! Sir Harley Quin 
and Sir Joseph Grimaldi (from Covent Garden) ! They have 
all the yellow ribbon. They are all honorable, and clever, and 
distinguished artists. Let us elbow through the rooms, make 
a bow to the lady of the house, give a nod to Sir George 
Thrum, who is leading the orchestra, and go and get some 
champagne and seltzer-water from Sir Richard Gunter, who is 
presiding at the buffet. A national decoration might be well 
and good : a token awarded by the country to all its hene- 
merentihus : but most gentlemen with Minerva stars would, I 
think, be inclined to wear very wide breast-collars to their 
coats. Suppose yourself, brother penman, decorated with this 
ribbon, and looking in the glass, would you not laugh? Would 
not wife and daughters laugh at that canary-colored emblem ? 

But suppose a man, old or young, of figure ever so stout, 
thin, stumpy, homely, indulging in looking-glass reflections 
with that hideous ribbon and cross called V. C. on his coat, 
would he not be proud? and his family, would they not be 
prouder ? For your nobleman there is the famous old blue garter 
and star, and welcome. If I were a marquis — if I had thirt}^ 
— forty thousand a year (settle the sum, my dear Alnaschar, 
according to j^our liking) , I should consider myself entitled to 
my seat in Parlia;Bent and to my garter. The garter belongs to 



20 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

the Ornamental Classes. Have you seen the new magnificent 
Pavo Spicifer at the Zoological Gardens, and do 3'ou grudge him 
his jewelled coronet and the azure splendor of his waistcoat ? I 
like my Lord Maj^or to have a gilt coach ; mj magnificent mon- 
arch to be surrounded by magnificent nobles : I huzzay respect- 
fully when they pass in procession. It is good for Mr. Briefless 
(50, Pump Court, fourth floor) that there should be a Lord 
Chancellor, with a gold robe and fifteen thousand a year. It is 
good for a poor curate that there should be splendid bishops at 
Fulham and Lambeth : their lordships were poor curates once, 
and have won, so to speak, their ribbon. Is a man who puts 
into a lottery to be sulkj^ because he does not win the twenty 
thousand pounds prize ? Am I to fall into a rage, and bully my 
family when I come home, after going to see Chatsworth or Wind- 
sor, because we have only tw^o little drawing-rooms ? Welcome 
to your garter, my lord, and shame upon him qui mal y pense! 

So I arrive in m}^ roundabout way near the point towards 
which I have been trotting ever since we set out. 

In a vo^^age to America, some nine years since, on the seventh 
or eighth day out from Liverpool, Captain L came to din- 
ner at eight bells as usual, talked a httle to the persons right 
and left of him, and helped the soup with his accustomed polite- 
ness. Then he went on deck, and was back in a minute, and 
operated on the fish, looking rather grave the while. 

Then he went on deck again ; and this time was absent, it 
ma}' be, three or five minutes, during which the fish disappeared, 
and the entrees arrived, and the roast beef. Saj'^ ten minutes 
passed — I can't tell after nine j^ears. 

Then L came down with a pleased *and happy coun- 
tenance this time, and began carving the sirloin: "We have 
seen the hght," he said. " Madam, may I help yoxx to a little 
gravy, or a little horse-radish ? " or what not ? 

I forget the name of the light ; nor does it matter. It was 
a point off" Newfoundland for which he was on the look-out, and 
so well did the " Canada" know where she was, that, between 
soup and beef, the captain had sighted the headland by which 
his course was lying. 

And so through storm and darkness, through fog and mid- 
night, the ship had pursued her steadj^ way over the pathless 
ocean and roaring seas, so surely that the officers who sailed her 
knew her place within a minute or two,. and guided us with a 
wonderful providence safe on our wa}^ Since the noble Cunard 
Compan}^ has run its ships, but one accident, and that through 
f.he error of a pilot, has happened on the line. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 21 

By this little incident (hourly of course repeated, and trivial 
to all sea-going people) I own I was immensely moved, and 
never can think of it but with a heart full of thanks and awe. 
We trust our lives to these seamen, and how nobty thej'^ fulfil 
their trust ! They are, under heaven, as a providence for us. 
Whilst we sleep, their untiring watchfulness keeps guard over 
us. All night through that bell sounds at its season, and tells 
how our sentinels defend us. It rang when the "Amazon" 
was on fire, and chimed its heroic signal of duty, and courage, 
and honor. Think of the dangers these seamen undergo for 
us : the hourly peril and watch ; the familiar storm ; the dread- 
ful iceberg ; the long winter nights when the decks are as glass, 
and the sailor has to chmb through icicles to bend the stiff sail 
on the yard ! Think of their courage and their kindnesses in 
cold, in tempest, in hunger, in wreck ! " The women and chil- 
dren to the boats," says the captain of the " Birkenhead," and, 
with the troops formed on the deck, and the crew obedient to 
the word of glorious command, the immortal ship goes down. 
Read the story of the " Sarah Sands : " — 

"SARAH SANDS. 

" The screw steamship ' Sarah Sands/ 1,330 registered tons, was char- 
tered by the East India Company in the autumn of 1858, for the convey- 
ance of troops to India. She was commanded by John Squire Castle. She 
took out a part of the 54th Regiment, upwards of 350 persons, besides the 
wives and children of some of the men, and the families of some of 
the officers. All went well till the 11th November, when the ship had 
reached lat. 14 S., long. 56 E., upwards of 400 miles from the Mau- 
ritius. 

" Between three and four p. m. on that day a very strong smell of fire 
was perceived arising from the after-deck, and upon going below into the 
hold. Captain Castle found it to be on fire, and immense volumes of smoke 
arising from it. Endeavors were made to reach the seat of the fire, but in ^ 
vain ; the smoke and heat were too much for the men. There was, how- 
ever, no confusion. Every order was obeyed with the same coolness and 
courage with which it was given. The engine was immediately stopped. 
All sail was taken in, and the ship brought to the wind, so as to drive the 
smoke and fire, which was in the after-part of the ship, astern. Others 
were, at the same time, getting fire-hoses fitted and passed to the scene of 
the fire. The fire, however, continued to increase, and attention was di- 
rected to the ammunition contained in the powder-magazines, which were 
situated one on each side the ship immediately above the fire. The star- 
board magazine was soon cleared. But by this time the whole of the after- 
part of the ship was so much enveloped in smoke that it was scarcely 
possible to stand, and great fears were entertained on account of the port 
magazine. Volunteers were called for, and came immediately, and, under 
the guidance of Lieutenant Hughes, attempted to clear tlie port magazine, 
which they succeeded in doing, with the exception, as was Supposed, of 
one or two barrels. It was most dangerous work. The men became over* 



22 ROUNDABOUT TAPERS. 

powered with the smoke and heat, and fell; and several, while thus en 
gaged, were dragged up by ropes, senseless. 

" The flames soon burst up through the deck, and running rapidly along 
the various cabins, set the greater part on fire. 

" In the meantime Captain Castle took steps for lowering the boats. 
There was a heavy gale at the time, but they were launched without the 
least accident. The soldiers were mustered on deck ; — there was no rush 
to the boats ; and the men obeyed the word of command as if on parade. 
The men were informed that Captain Castle did not despair of saving the 
ship, but that they must be prepared to leave her if necessary. The women 
and children were lowered into the port lifeboat, under the charge of Mr. 
Very, third officer, who had orders to keep clear of the ship until recalled. 

" Captain Castle then commenced constructing rafts of spare spars. 
In a short time, tliree were put together, which would have been capable 
of saving a great number of those on board. Two were launched over- 
board, and safely moored alongside, and then a third was left across the 
deck forward, ready to be launched. 

" In the meantime the fire had made great progress. The whole of the 
cabins were one body of fire, and at about 8.30 p. m. flames burst through 
the upper deck, and shortly after the mizzen rigging caught fire. Fears 
were entertained of the ship paying off, in which case the flames would 
have been swept forwards by the wind; but fortunately the after-braces 
were burnt through, and the main-yard swung round, which kept the ship's 
head to wind. About nine p. m., a fearful explosion took place in the port 
magazine, arising, no doubt, from the one or two barrels of powder which 
it had been impossible to remove. By this time the ship was one body of 
flame, from the stern to the main rigging, and thinking it scarcely possible 
to save her. Captain Castle called Major Brett (then in command of the 
troops, for the Colonel was in one of the boats) forward, and, teUing him 
that he feared the ship was lost, requested him to endeavor to keep order 
amongst the troops till the last, but, at the same time, to use every exertion 
to check the fire. Providentially, the iron bulkhead in the after-part of 
the ship withstood the action of the flames, and here all efforts were con- 
centrated to keep it cool. 

" ' No person,' says the captain, ' can describe the manner in which the 
men worked to keep the fire back ; one party were below, keeping the 
bulkhead cool, and when several were dragged up senseless, fresh volun- 
teers took their places, who were, however, soon in the same state. At 
about ten p. m., the maintopsail-yard took fire. Mr. Welch, one quarter- 
master, and four or five soldiers, went aloft with wet blankets, and suc- 
ceeded in extinguishing -it, but not until the yard and mast were nearly 
burnt through. The work of fighting the fire below contmucd for hours, 
and about midnight it appeared that some impression was made ; and after 
that, the men drove it back, inch by inch, until daylight, when they had 
completely got it under. The ship was now in a frightful plight. The 
^fter-part was Uterally burnt out — merely the shell remaining — the port 
quarter blown out by the explosion : fifteen feet of water in the hold. 

" The gale still prevailed, and the ship was rolling and pitching in a 
heavy sea, and taking in large quantities of water abaft : the tanks, too, 
were rolling from side to side in the hold. 

" As soon as the smoke was partially cleared away. Captain Castle got 
spare sails and blankets aft to stop the leak, passing two hawsers round 
the stern, and setting them up. The troops were employed baling and 
pumping. This continued during the whole morning. 

" In the cpurse of the day the ladies joined the ship. The boats were 



KOUXDABOUT PAPERS. 23 

ordered alongside, but they found the sea too heavy to remain there. The 
gig had been abandoned during the night, and the crew, under Mr. Wood, 
fourth officer, had got into another of the boats. The troops were em- 
ployed the remainder of the day baling and pumping, and the crew secur- 
ing the stern. All hands were employed during the following night baling 
and pumping, the boats being moored alongside, where they received some 
damage. At daylight, on the 13th, the crew were employed hoisting the 
boats, the troops were working manfully baling and pumping. Latitude 
at noon, 13 deg. 12 min. south. At five p. m., the foresail and foretopsail 
were set, the rafts were cut away, and the ship bore for the Mauritius. On 
Thursday, the 19th, she sighted the Island of Rodrigues, and arrived at 
Mauritius on Monday the 23rd." 

The Nile and Trafalgar are not more glorious to our coun- 
try, are not greater victories than these won by our merchant- 
seamen. And if you look in the Captain's reports of an}^ 
maritime register, 3^ou will see similar acts recorded every day. 
I have such a volume for last year, now lying before me. In 
the second number, as I open it at hazard, Captain Roberts, 
master of the ship " Empire," from Shields to London, reports 
how on the 14th ult. (the 14th December, 1859), he, "being 
off Whitb}'^, discovered the ship to be on fire between the main 
hold and boilers : got the hose from the engine laid on, and 
succeeded in subduing the fire ; but only apparently ; for at 
seven the next morning, the ' Dudgeon ' bearing S.S.E. seven 
miles' distance, the fire again broke out, causing the ship to be 
enveloped in flames on both sides of midships : got the hose 
again into play and all hands to work with buckets to combat 
with the fire. Did not succeed in stopping it till four p.m., to 
effect which, were obliged to cut away the deck and top sides, 
-and throw overboard part of the cargo. The vessel was very 
much damaged and leaky : determined to make for the Hum- 
ber. Ship was run on shore, on the mud, near Grimsby har- 
bor, with five feet of water in her hold. The donkey-engine 
broke down. The water increased so fast as to put out the 
furnace fires and render the ship almost unmanageable. On 
the tide flowing, a tug towed the ship off the mud, and got her 
into Grimsby to repair." 

On the 2nd of November, Captain Strickland, of the "Pur- 
chase" brigantine, from Liverpool to Yarmouth, U. S., "en- 
countered heavy gales from W.N.W. to W.S.W., in lat. 43° N., 
long. 34° W., in which we lost jib, foretopmast, staysail, top- 
sail, and carried away the foretopmast stays, bobstays and 
bowsprit, headsails, cut- water and stern, also started the wood 
ends, which caused the vessel to leak. Put her before the wind 
and sea, and hove about twenty-five tons of cargo overboard to 



24 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

lighten the ship forward. Slung myself in a bowline, and by 
means of thi'usting 2^-inch rope in the opening, contrived to 
stop a great portion of the leak. 

'''•December \^th. — The crew continuing night and day at 
the pumps, could not keep the ship free ; deemed it prudent 
for the benefit of those concerned to bear up for the nearest 
port. On arriving in lat. 48° 45' N., long. 23° W., observed 
a vessel with a signal of distress fl3ang. Made towards her, 
when she proved to be the barque ' Carleton,' water-logged. 
The captain and crew asked to be taken off. Hove to, and 
received them on board, consisting of thirteen men : and their 
ship was abandoned. We then proceeded on our course, the 
crew of the abandoned vessel assisting all they could to keep 
my ship afloat. We arrived at Cork harbor on the 27th ult." 

Captain Coulson, master of the brig " Othello," reports that 
his brig foundered off Portland, December 27 ; — encountering 
a strong gale, and shipping two heav}^ seas in succession, which 
hove the ship on her beam-ends. "Observing no chance of 
saving the ship, took to the long boat, and within ten minutes 
of leaving her saw the brig founder. We were picked up the 
same morning by the French ship ' Commerce de Paris,' Captain 
Tombarel." 

Here, in a single column of a newspaper, what sti'ange, 
touching pictures do we find of seamen's dangers, vicissitudes, 
gallantry, generosity ! The ship on fire — the captain in the 
gale slinging himself in a bowline to stop the leak — the French- 
man in the hour of danger coming to his British comrade's res- 
cue — the brigantine almost a wreck, working up to the barque 
with the signal of distress flying, and taking off her crew of 
thirteen men. "We then proceeded on our course, the crew 
of the abandoned vessel assisting all they could to keep my ship 
afloat.'' What noble, simple words ! What courage, devoted- 
ness, brotherly love ! Do they not cause the heart to beat, and 
the eyes to fill? 

This is what seamen do daily, and for one another. One 
lights occasionally upon different stories. It happened, not 
very long since, that the passengers by one of the great ocean 
steamers were wrecked, and, after undergoing the most severe 
hardships, were left, destitute and helpless, at a miserable coal- 
ing port. Amongst them were old men, ladies, and children. 
When the next steamer arrived, the passengers by that steamer 
took alarm at the haggard and miserable appearance of their 
unfortunate predecessors, and actually remonstrated with their 
own captain^ urging him not to take the poor creatures on board. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 25 

There was every excuse-, of course. The last-arrived steamer 
was already dangerously full : the cabins were crowded ; there 
were sick and deUcate people on board — sick and delicate peo- 
ple who had paid a large price to the company for room, food, 
comfort, already not too sufficient. If fourteen of us are in 
an omnibus, will we see three or four women outside and say, 
"Come in, because this is the last 'bus, and it rains?" Of 
course not : but think of that remonstrance, and of that Samar- 
itan master of the " Purchase " brigantine ! 

In the winter of '53, 1 went from Marseilles to Civita Vecchia, 
in one of the magnificent P. and O. ships, the " Valetta," the 
master of which subsequently did distinguished service in the 
Crimea. This was his first Mediterranean voyage, and he sailed 
his ship by the charts alone, going into each port as surely as 
any pilot. I remember walking the deck at night with this 
most skilful, gallant, well-bred, and well-educated gentleman, 
and the glow of eager enthusiasm with which he assented, when 
I asked him whether he did not think a ribbon or order would 
be welcome or useful in his service. 

Why is there not an Order of Britannia for British sea. 
men ? In the Merchant and the Royal Navy alike, occur almost 
daily instances and occasions for the display of science, skill, 
bravery, fortitude in trying circumstances, resource in danger. 
In the first number of the Cornhill Magazine^ a friend conti'ib- 
uted a most touching story of the M'Chntock expedition, in the 
dangers and dreadful glories of which he shared ; and the writer 
was a merchant captain. How many more are there (and, for 
the honor of England, may there be many like him !) — gallant, 
accomplished, high-spirited, enterprising masters of their noble 
profession ! Can our fountain of Honor not be brought to such 
men ? It plays upon captains and colonels in seemly profusion. 
It pours forth not illiberal rewards upon doctors and judges. It 
sprinkles mayors and aldermen. It bedews a painter now and 
again. It has spirited a baronetcy upon two, and bestowed •&. 
coronet upon one noble man of letters. Diplomatists take their 
Bath in it as of right ; and it flings out a profusion of glittering 
stars upon the nobility of the three kingdoms. Cannot Britan- 
nia find a ribbon for her sailors ? The Navy, royal or mercan- 
tile, is a Service. The command of a ship, or the conduct of her, 
implies danger, honor, science, skill, subordination, good faith. 
It may be a victory, such as that of the " Sarah Sands ; " it 
may be discovery, such as that of the " Fox ; " it may be heroic 
disaster, such as that of the " Birkenhead ; " and in such events 
merchant seamen, as well as royal seamen, take their share. 



26 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Wh}- is there not, then, an Order of Britannia? One daj^ a 
yonng officer of the " Euryahis "* ma}' win it ; and, having just 
read the memoirs of Lord Dundonald, I know who ought to 
have the first Grand Cross. 



ON SOME LATE GEEAT VICTORIES. 

On the 18th da}^ of April last I went to see a friend in a neigh- 
boring Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld a group 
something like that here depicted. A newsboj^ had stopped in 
his walk, and was reading aloud the journal which it was his 
dut}' to deliver ; a pretty orange-girl, with a heap of blazing 
fruit, rendered more brilliant by one of those great blue papers 
in which oranges are now artfully wrapped, leant over the railing 
and listened ; and opposite the nympham diseentem there was a 
capering and acute-eared young satirist of a crossing-sweeper, 
who had left his neighboring professional avocation and chance 
of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little newsboy. 

That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as 
he read it out to his audience, was saying : — " And — now — 
Tom — coming up smiling — after his fall — dee — delivered a 
rattling clinker upon the Benicia Boy's — potato-trap — but was 
met by a — punisher on the nose — which," &c. &c. ; or words 
to that effect. Bett}' at 52 let me in, while the bo}' was read- 
ing his lecture ; and, having been some twent}' minutes or so 
in the house and paid iwy visit, I took leave. 

The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and 
his audience had scarcely changed their position. Having read 
every word of the battle m)'self in the morning, I did not staj' 
to listen further ; but if the gentleman who expected his paper 
at the usual hour that da}' experienced delay and a little dis- 
appointment I shall not be surprised. 

I am not going to expatiate on the battle. I have read in 
the correspondent's letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the 
midst of the company assembled the reader's humble servant 
was present, and in a very polite societ}', too, of "poets, 
clergymen, men of letters, and members of both Houses of 
Parliament." If so, I must have walked to the station in my 

* Prince Alfred was serving on board the frigate " Euryalus " when thia 
was written 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 27 

sleep, paid three guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction, 
and returned to bed unconscious, for I certainl}^ woke there 
about the time when history relates that the fight was over. 
I do not know whose colors I wore — the Benician's, or those 
of the Irish champion ; nor remember where the fight took 
place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is bound to recollect. 
Ought Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or punished 
for being naughty? B}^ the shade of Brutus the elder, I don't 
know. 

In George II. 's time, there was a turbulent navy lieutenant 
(Handsome Smith he was called — his picture is at Greenwich 
now, in brown velvet, and gold and scarlet ; his coat handsome, 
his waistcoat exceedingly handsome ; but his face b}^ no means 
the beaut}') — there was, I sa}', a turbulent 3'oung lieutenant 
who was broke on a complaint of the French ambassador, for 
obliging a French ship of war to lower her topsails to his ship 
at Spithead. But, by the King's orders, Tom was next day 
made Captain Smith. Well, if I were absolute king, I would 
send Tom Saj^ers to the mill for a month, and make him Sir 
Thomas on coming out of Clerkenwell. You are a naughty 
bo}^, Tom ! but then, you know, we ought to love our breth- 
ren, though ever so naught}^ We are moralists, and repri- 
mand 3'ou ; and 3'ou are hereb}' reprimanded accordingl}^ But 
in case England should ever have need of a few score thousand 
champions, who laugh at danger ; who cope with giants ; who, 
stricken to the ground, jump up and gayl}^ rally, and fall, and 
rise again, and strike, and die rather than 3'ield — in case the 
countr3' should need such men, and 3'Ou should know them, be 
pleased to send lists of the misguided persons to the principal 
police stations, where means ma3' some da3' be found to utilize 
their wretched powers, and give their deplorable energies a right 
direction. Suppose, Tom, that 3'Ou and 3'our friends are pitted 
against an immense invader — suppose 3^ou are bent on holding 
the ground, and dying there, if need be — suppose it is life, 
freedom, honor, home, 3'OU are fighting for, and there is a 
death-dealing sword or rifle in 3^our hand, with which 30U are 
going to resist some tremendous enem3^ who challenges your 
championship on 3'our native shore? Then, Sir Thomas, resist 
him to the death, and it is all right : kill him, and heaven bless 
3'ou. Drive him into the sea, and there destroy, smash, and 
drown him ; and let us sing Laudamus. In these national 
cases, 3'Ou see, we override the indisputable first laws of morals. 
Loving your neighbor is very well, but suppose 3'Our neighbor 
comes over from Calais and Boulogne to rob you of your laws, 



28 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

your liberties, your newspapers, j^our parliament (all of which 
some dear neighbors of ours have given up in the most self- 
den3dng manner) :. suppose any neighbor were to cross the 
water and propose this kind of thing to us ? Should we not be 
justified in humbly trying to pitch him into the water? If it 
were the King of Belgium himself we must do so. I mean that 
fighting, of course, is wrong ; but that there are occasions 
when, &c. — I suppose I mean that that one-handed fight of 
Sayers is one of the most spirit-stirring little stories ever told : 
and, with every love and respect for Morality — my spirit says 
to her, "Do, for goodness' sake, m}" dear madam, keep your 
true, and pure, and womanly, and gentle remarks for another 
day. Have the great kindness to stand a leetle aside, and just 
let us see one or two more rounds between the men. That little 
man with the one hand powerless on his breast facing yonder 
giant for hours, and felling him, too, every now and then ! It 
is the little ' Java ' and the ' Constitution ' over again," 

I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave Heenan, 
who has acted and written since the battle with a true warrior's 
courtes}^, and with a great deal of good logic too, that the battle 
was a drawn one. The advantage was all on Mr. Sayers's side. 
Sa}' a young lad of sixteen insults me in the street, and I try 
and thrash him, and do it. Well, I have thrashed a 3'oung lad. 
You great, big tyrant, couldn't you hit one of j^our own size ? 
But say the lad thrashes me ? In either case I walk awa}' dis- 
comfited : but in the latter, I am positivel}^ put to shame. 
Now, when the ropes were cut from that death-grip, and Sir 
Thomas released, the gentleman of Benicia was confessedly^ 
blind of one eye, and speedily aftei*wards was bhnd of both. 
Could Mr. Savers have held out for three minutes, for five 
minutes, for ten minutes more? He saj^s he could. So we 
say we could have held out, and did, and had beaten off the 
enem}' at Waterloo, even if the Prussians hadn't come up. 
The opinions differ prett}^ much according to the nature of the 
opinants. I say the Duke and Tom could have held out, that 
they meant to hold out, that they did hold out, and that there 
has been fistifying enough. That crowd which came in and 
stopped the fight ought to be considered like one of those divine 
clouds which the gods send in Homer ; 

" Apollo shrouds 
The godlike Trojan in a veil of clouds." 

It is the best way of getting the godlike Trojan out of the 
scrape, don't you see? The nodus is cut; Tom is out of 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 29 

chancery ; the Benicia Boy not a bit the worse, nay, better than 
if he had beaten the little man. He has not the humiliation of 
conquest. He is greater, and will be loved more hereafter by 
the gentle sex. Suppose he had overcome the godlike Trojan? 
Suppose he had tied Tom's corpse to his cab-wheels, and driven 
to Farnham, smoking the pipe of triumph? Faugh ! the gi-eat 
hulking conqueror ! Why did jon not hold your hand from 
yonder hero? Ever3^body, I say, was relieved by that oppor- 
tune appearance of the British gods, protectors of native valor, 
who interfered, and "withdrew" their champion. 

Now, suppose six-feet-two conqueror, and five-feet-eight 
beaten ; would Sa3^ers have been a whit the less gallant and 
meritorious? If Sancho had been allowed realli/ to reign in 
Barataria, I make no doubt that, with his good sense and kind- 
ness of heart, he would have devised some means of rewarding 
the brave vanquished, as well as the brave victors in the Bara- 
tarian army, and' that a champion who had fought a good fight 
would have been a knight of King Don Sancho's orders, whatever 
the upshot of the combat had been. Suppose Wellington over- 
whelmed on the plateau of Mont St. John ; suppose Washington 
attacked and beaten at Valley Forge — and either supposition 
is quite easy — and what becomes of the heroes ? The}^ would 
have been as brave, honest, heroic, wise ; but their glor}^, where 
would it have been? Should we have had their portraits hang- 
ing in our chambers ? have been familiar with their histories ? 
have pondered over their letters, common lives, and daily saj^- 
ings ? There is not only merit, but luck which goes to making 
a hero out of a gentleman. Mind, please you, I am not saying 
that the hero is after all not so very heroic ; and have not 
the least desire to grudge him his merit because of his good 
fortune. 

Have you any idea whither this Roundabout Essay on some 
late great victories is tending ? Do you suppose that by those 
words I mean Trenton, Brandywine, Salamanca, Vittoria, and 
so forth ? By a great victor}^ I can't mean that affair at Farn- 
ham, for it was a drawn fight. Where, then, are the victories, 
pray, and when are we coming to them ? 

My good sir, you will perceive that in this Nicaean discourse 
I have only as j^et advanced as far as this — that a hero, 
whether he wins or loses, is a hero ; and that if a fellow will 
but be honest and courageous, and do his best, we are for pa}'- 
ing all honor to him. Furthermore, it has been asserted that 
Fortune has a good deal to do with the making of heroes ; and 
thus hinted for the consolation of those who don't happen to he 



30 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

engaged in an}^ stupendous victories, that, had opportunity so 
served, the}^ might have been heroes too. If you are not, 
friend, it is not your fault, whilst I don't wish to detract from 
any gentleman's reputation who is. There. My worst enemy 
can't take objection to that. The point might have been put 
more briefl}^ perhaps ; but, if j^ou please, we will not argue 
that question. 

Well, then. The victories which I wish especially to com- 
memorate in this paper, are the six great, complete, prodigious, 
and undeniable victories, achieved by the corps which the editor 
of the Cornhill Magazine has the honor to command. When 
I seemed to speak disparagingly but now of generals, it was 
that chief I had in my I (if 3^ou will permit me the expression). 
I wished him not to be elated by too much prosperity ; I warned 
him against assuming heroic imperatorial airs, and cocking his 
laurels too jauntily over his ear. I was his conscience, and 
stood on the splash-board of his triumph-car, whispering, 
'"'• Hominem memento te^ As we rolled along the way, and 
passed the weathercocks on the temples, I saluted the S3^mbol 
of the goddess Fortune with a reverent awe. " We have done 
our little endeavor," I said, bowing my head, " and mortals can 
do no more. But we might have fought bravel}'^ and not won. 
We might have cast the coin, calUng, ' Plead,' and lo ! Tail 
might have come uppermost." O thou Ruler of Victories ! 
— thou Awarder of Fame ! — thou Giver of Crowns (and shil- 
lings) — if thou hast smiled upon us, shall we not be thankful? 
There is a Saturnine philosopher, standing at the door of his 
book-shop, who, I fancy, has a pooh-pooh expression as the 
triumph passes. (I can't see quite clearty for the laurels, 
which have fallen down over my nose.) One hand is reining 
in the two white elephants that draw the car ; I raise the other 
hand up to — to the laurels, and pass on, waving him a grace- 
ful recognition. Up the Hill of Ludgate — around the Pauline 
Square — by the side of Chepe — until it reaches our own Hill 
of Corn — the procession passes. The Imperator is bowing to 
the people ; the captains of the legions are riding round the 
car, their gallant minds struck by the thought, " Have we not 
fought as well as yonder fellow, swaggering in the chariot, and 
are we not as good as he?" Granted, with all my heart, 
m}' dear lads. When 3'our consulship arrives, may you be as 
fortunate. When these hands, now growing old, shall lay 
down sword and truncheon, may 3'ou mount the car, and ride 
to the temple of Jupiter. Be 3^ours the laurel then. Neque me 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 31 

myrtus dedecet^ looking cosily down from the arbor where I sit 
under the arched vine. 

I fanc}^ the Imperator standing on the steps of the temple 
(erected by Titus) on the Mons Frumentarius, and addressing 
the citizens: " Quirites ! " he saj^s, "in our campaign of six 
months, we have been engaged six times, and in each action 
have taken near upon a hundred thousand prisoners. Go to ! 
What are other magazines compared to our magazine ? (Sound, 
trumpeter !) What banner is there like that of Cornhill ? You, 
philosopher yonder ! " (he shirks under his mantle.) " Do you 
know what it is to have a hundred and ten thousand readers ? 
A hundred thousand readers? a hundred thousand buyers!" 
(Cries of " No ! " — " Pooh ! " "Yes, upon my honor!" 
" Oh, come ! " and murmurs of applause and derision) — "I 
say more than a hundred thousand purchasers — and I believe 
as much as a million readers!" (Immense sensation.) "To 
these have we said an unktfid word ? We have enemies ; have 
we hit them an unkind blow ? Have we sought to pursue part}' 
aims, to forward private jobs, to advance selfish schemes? 
The only persons to whom wittingly we have given pain are 
some who have volunteered for our corps — and of these vol- 
unteers we have had thousands" (Murmurs and grumbles.) 
"What commander, citizens, could place all these men! — 
could make officers of all these men ? " (cries of ' ' No — no ! " and 
laughter) — " could say, ' I accept this recruit, though he is too 
short for our standard, because he is poor, and has a mother at 
home who wants bread ? ' could enroll this other, who is too weak 
to bear arms, because he says, ' Look, sir, I shall be stronger 
anon.' The leader of such an army as ours must select his men, 
not because the}^ are good and virtuous, but because the}^ are 
strong and capable. To these our ranks are ever open, and in 
addition to the warriors who surround me " — (the generals look 
proudly conscious) — "I tell 3"0u, citizens, that I am in treat}^ 
with other and most tremendous champions, who will march hy 
the side of our veterans to the achievement of fresh victories. 
Now, blow, trumpets ! Bang, ye gongs ! and drummers, drub 
the thundering skins ! Generals and chiefs, we go to sacrifice 
to the gods." 

Crowned with flowers, the captains enter the temple, the 
other Magazines walking modestly behind them. The people 
huzza ; and, in some instances, kneel and kiss the fringes of 
the robes of the warriors. The Philosopher puts up his shutters, 
and retires into his shop, deeply moved. In ancient times, 
Pliny (apud Smith) relates it was the custom of the Imperator 



32 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

" to paint his whole bodj^ a bright red ; " and, also, on ascend- 
ing the Hill, to have some of the hostile chiefs led aside " to 
the adjoining prison, and put to death." We propose to dis- 
pense with both these ceremonies. 



THOENS m THE CUSHION. 

In the Essay with which this volume commences, the Oom- 
hill Magazine was likened to a sliip sailing forth on her voj^age, 
and the captain uttered a very sincere prayer for her prosperity. 
The dangers of storm and rock, the vast outlay upon ship and 
cargo, and the certain risk of the venture, gave the chief 
officer a feeUng of no small anxietjf ; for who could say from 
what quarter danger might arise, and how his owner's property 
might be imperilled? After a six months' voyage, we with 
very thankful hearts could acknowledge our good fortune : and, 
taking up the apologue in the Roundabout manner, we com- 
posed a triumphal procession in honor of the Magazine, and 
imagined the Imperator thereof riding in a sublime car to return 
thanks in the Temple of Victor3\ Cornhill is accustomed to 
grandeur and greatness, and has witnessed, every ninth of 
November, for I don't know how many centuries, a prodigious 
annual pageant, chariot, progress, and flourish of trumpetr}' ; 
and being so ver}^ near the Mansion House, I am sure the 
reader will understand how the idea of pageant and procession 
came naturall}' to m}^ mind. The imagination easily supplied 
a gold coach, eight cream-colored horses of your true Pegasus 
breed, huzzaing multitudes, running footmen, and clanking 
knights in armor, a chaplain and a sword-bearer with a muff on 
his head, scowling out of the coach-window, and a Lord Mayor 
all crimson, fur, gold chain, and white ribbons, solemnly occu- 
pying the place of state. A playful fancy could have carried 
the matter farther, could have depicted the feast in the Egyp- 
tian Hall, the Ministers, Chief Justices, and right reverend 
prelates taking their seats round about his lordship, the turtle 
and other delicious viands, and Mr. Toole behind the central 
throne, bawling out to the assembled guests and dignitaries : 
" My Lord So-and-so, my Lord What-d'ye-call-'im, my Lord 
Etcsetera, the Lord Mayor pledges 3'ou all in a loving-cup." 
Then the noble proceedings come to an end ; Lord Simper 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 33 

proposes the ladies ; the company rises from table, and ad- 
journs to coffee and muffins. The carriages of the nobihty and 
guests roll back to the West. The Egyptian Hall, so bright 
just now, appears in a twilight glimmer, in which waiters are 
seen ransacking the dessert, and rescuing the spoons. His 
lordship and the Lady Mayoress go into their private apart- 
ments. The robes are doffed, the collar and white ribbons are 
removed. The Mayor becomes a man, and is pretty surely in 
a fluster about the speeches which he has just uttered ; remem- 
bering too well now, wretched creature, the principal points 
which he didn't make when he rose to speak. He goes to bed 
to headache, to care, to repentance, and, I dare saj^, to a dose 
of something which his body-physician has prescribed for him. 
And there are 'ever so many men in the city who fancy that 
man happy ! 

Now, suppose that all through that 9th of November his 
lordship has had a racking rheumatism, or a toothache, let 
us say, during all dinner-time — through which he has been 
obliged to grin and mumble his poor old speeches. Is he 
enviable ? Would you like to change with his lordship ? Sup- 
pose that bumper which his golden footman brings him, instead 
i'fackins of ypocras or canary, contains some abomination of 
senna? Away! Remove the golden goblet, insidious cup- 
bearer ! You now begin to perceive the gloomj^ moral which I 
am about to draw. 

Last month we sang the song of glorification, and rode in 
the chariot of triumph. It was all very well. It was right to 
huzza, and be thankful, and cry. Bravo, our side ! and besides, 
you know, there was the enjoyment of thinking how pleased 
Brown, and Jones, 'and Robinson (our dear friends) would 
be at this announcement of success. But now that the per- 
formance is over, my good sir, just step into my private 
room, and see that it is not all pleasure — this winning of suc- 
cesses. Cast your e3'^e over those newspapers, over those let- 
ters. See what the critics say of your harmless jokes, neat 
little trim sentences, and pet waggeries ! Why, you are 
no better than an idiot ; you are drivelling ; your powers 
have left you ; this always overrated writer is rapidly sink- 
ing to, &c. 

This is not pleasant ; but neither is this the point. It 
may be the critic is right, and the author wrong. It may be 
that the archbishop's sermon is not so fine as some of those 
discourses twenty years ago which used to delight the faithful 
in Granada. Or it may be (pleasing thought !) that the critic 

o 



34 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

is a dullard, and does not understand what he is wi'iting about. 
Everybody who has been to an exhibition has heard visitors 
discoursing about the pictures before their faces. One sa3's. 
"This is very well;" another saj^s, "This is stuff and rub- 
bish;" another cries, "Bravo! this is a masterpiece:" and 
each has a right to his opinion. For example, one of the pic- 
tures I admired most at the Ilo3'al Academj^ is b}" a gentleman 
on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes. This picture is 
No. 346, "Moses," by Mr. S. Solomon. I thought it had a 
great intention, I thought it finely drawn and composed. It 
nobly represented, to my mind, the dark children of the Egyp- 
tian bondage, and suggested the touching story. M}^ news- 
paper says : " Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy 
baby, do not form a pleasing object ; " and so good-by, 
Mr. Solomon. Are not most of our babies served so in life? 
and doesn't Mr. Robinson consider Mr. Brown's cherub an 
ugl}', squalling little brat? So cheer up, Mr. S. S. It ma}' 
be the critic who discoursed on your baby is a bad judge of 
babies. When Pharaoh's kind daughter found the child, and 
cherished and loved it, and took it home, and found a nurse for 
it, too, I dare sa}' there were grim, brick-dust colored chamber- 
lains, or some of the tough, old, meagre, yellow princesses at 
court, who never had children themselves, who cried out, 
' ' Faugh ! the honid little squalling wretch ! " and knew he 
would never come to good ; and said, " Didn't I tell you so?" 
when he assaulted the Egyptian. 

Never mind then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, because a critic 
pooh-poohs your work of art — your Moses — your child — 
your foundling. Why, did not a wiseacre in Blackwood's Maga- 
zine lately fall foul of " Tom Jones?" O hypercritic ! So, to 
be sure, did good old Mr. Richardson, who could write novels 
himself — but you, and I, and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree 
in giving our respect, and wonder, and admiration, to the brave 
old master. 

In these last words I am supposing the respected reader to 
be endowed with a sense of humor, which he m^y or may 
not possess ; indeed, don't we know many an honest man 
who can no more comprehend a joke than he can turn a 
tune. But I take for granted, my dear sir, that you are 
brimming over with fan — 3'ou mayn't make jokes, but 3'ou 
could if you would — you know you could : and in 3'our quiet 
way you*^ enjo}^ them extremely. Now man}^ people neither 
make them, nor understand them when made, nor like them 
when understood, and are suspicious, testy, and angry with 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 35 

jokers. Have you ever watched an elderly male or female — 
an elderly " party," so to speak, who begins to find out 
that some 3^oung wag of the company is "chaffing" him? 
Have 3'ou ever tried the sarcastic or Socratic method with a 
child? Little simple he or she, in the innocence of the 
simple heart, plays some silly freak, or makes some absurd 
remark, which you turn to ridicule. The little creature 
dimly perceives that you are making fun of him, writhes, 
blushes, grows uneasy, bursts into tears, — upon my word it 
is not fair to try the weapon of ridicule upon that innocent 
}'oung victim. The awful objurgatory practice he is accus- 
tomed to. Point out his fault, and lay bare the dire con- 
sequences thereof: expose it roundly, and give him a proper, 
solemn, moral whipping — but do not attempt to castigare 
ridendo. Do not laugh at him writhing, and cause all the other 
boys in the school to laugh. Remember your .own young days 
at school, my friend — the tinghng cheeks, burning ears, burst- 
ing heart, and passion of desperate tears, with which 3^ou 
looked up, after having performed some blunder, whilst the 
doctor held 3^ou to public scorn before the class, and cracked 
his great clumsy jokes upon you — helpless, and a prisoner ! 
Better the block itself, and the lictors, with their fasces of 
birch- twigs, than the maddening torture of those jokes ! 

Now with respect to jokes — and the present company of 
coiu'se excepted — many people, perhaps most people, are as 
infants. The3^ hare little sense of humor. They don't like 
jokes. Raillery in writing annoys and offends them. The 
coarseness apart, I think I have met ver3^, very few women 
who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, 
tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the sat3T alwa3'S a wicked 
brute at heart, and are the3^ rightl3^ shocked at his grin, his 
leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears? Fi donc^ le vilain monstre^ 
with his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs ! Let him go 
and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull 
them over those horrid shanks ; put a large gown and bands 
over beard and hide ; and pour a dozen of lavender-water into 
his lawn handkerchief, and cr3^, and never make a joke again. 
It shall all be highly-distilled poes3% and perfumed sentiment, 
and gushing eloquence ; and the foot shan't peep out, and a 
plague take it. Cover it up with the surplice. Out with 3^our 
cambric, dear ladies, and let us all whimper together. 

Now, then, hand on heart, we declare that it is not the fire 
of adverse critics which afflicts or frightens the editorial bosom. 
They may be right ; they ma3^ be rogues who have a personal 



36 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

spite ; they may be dullards who kick and bray as their nature 
is to do, and prefer thistles to pineapples ; they may be con- 
scientious, acute, deeply learned, dehghtful judges, who 
see your joke in a moment, and the profound wisdom l^ing 
underneath. Wise or dull, laudatory or otherwise, we put 
their opinions aside. If they applaud, we are pleased : if they 
shake their quick pens, and fly off with a hiss, we resign their 
favors and put on all the fortitude we can muster. I would 
rather have the lowest man's good word than his bad one, to 
be sure ; but as for coaxing a compliment, or wheedling him 
into good-humor, or stopping his angry mouth with a good 
dinner, or accepting his contributions for a certain Magazine, 
for fear of his barking or snapping elsewhere — allons done ! 
These shall not be our acts. Bow-wow, Cerberus ! Here shall 
be no sop for thee, unless — unless Cerberus is an uncommonly 
good dog, when we shall bear no malice because he flew at us 
from our neighbor's gate. 

What, then, is the main grief you spoke of as annoying you — 
the toothache in the Lord Mayor's jaw, the thorn in the cushion 
of the editorial chair? It is there. Ah ! it stings me now as I 
write. It comes with almost everj'^ morning's post. At night 
I come home and take my letters up to bed (not daring to open 
them), and in the morning I find one, two, three thorns on my 
pillow. Three I extracted j^esterday ; two I found this morn- 
ing. They don't sting quite so sharph^ as they did ; but a skin 
is a skin, and thej^ bite, after all, most wickedly. It is all very 
fine to advertise on the Magazine, " Contributions are only to 
be sent to Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., and not to the Editor's 
private residence." My dear sir, how little you know man- or 
woman-kind, if j'ou fancy they will take that sort of warning ! 
How am I to know, (though, to be sure, I begin to know now,) 
as I take the letters off the tray, which of those envelopes 
contains a real bona fide letter, and which a thorn ? One of 
the best invitations this year I mistook for a thorn-letter, and 
kept it without opening. This is what I call a thorn-letter : — 



" Camberwell, June 4. 

" Sir, — May I hope, may I entreat, that you will favor me by perusing the 
enclosed lines, and tliat they may be found worthy of insertion in the Corn- 
hill Magazine. We have known better days, sir. I have a sick and widowed 
mother to maintain, and little brothers and sisters who look to me. I do 
my utmost as a governess to support them. I toil at night when they are 
at rest, and my own hand and brain are alike tired. If I could add but a 
little to our means by my pen, many of my poor invalid's wants might be 
supplied, and I could procure for her comforts to which she is now a 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 37 

stranger. Heaven knows it is not for want of will or for want of energy on 
my part, that she is now in ill-health, and our little household almost with- 
out bread. Do — do cast a kind glance over my poem, and if you can help 
us, the widow, the orphans will bless you ! I remain, sir, in anxious ex- 
pectancy, 

" Your faithful servant, 

" S. S. S." 

And enclosed is a little poem or two, and an envelope with its' 
pennj stamp — heaven help us ! — and the writer's name and 
address. 

Now 3^011 see what I mean by a thorn. Here is the case put 
with true female logic. " I am poor ; I am good ; I am ill ; I 
work hard ; I have a sick mother and hungry brothers and 
sisters dependent on me. You can help us if you will." And 
then I look at the paper, with the thousandth part of a faint 
hope that it may be suitable, and I find it won't do : and I knew 
it wouldn't do : and wh}' is this poor lady to appeal to my pity 
and bring her poor little ones kneeling to my bedside, and call- 
ing for bread which I can give them if I choose ? No day passes 
but that argument ad misericordiam is used. Day and night 
that sad voice is crying out for help. Thrice it appealed to me 
yesterday. Twice this morning it cried to me : and I have no 
doubt when I go to get m}^ hat, I shall find it with its piteous 
face and its pale famil}^ about it, waiting for me in the hall. 
One of the immense advantages which women have over our 
sex is, that the}' actually' like to read these letters. Like let- 
ters ? O mercy on us ! Before I was an editor I did not like 
the postman much ; — but now ! 

A very common way with these petitioners is to begin with 
a fine flummery about the merits and eminent genius of the 
person whom they are addressing. But this artifice, I state 
publicl}', is of no avail. When I see that kind of herb, I know 
the snake within it, and fling it away before it has time to sting. 
Awa}', reptile, to the waste-paper basket, and thence to the 
flames ! 

But of these disappointed people, some take their disap- 
pointment and meekly bear it. Some hate and hold you their 
enemy because you could not be their friend. Some, furious 
and envious, say: "Who is this man who refuses what I 
offer, and how dares he, the conceited coxcomb, to deny my 
merit?" 

Sometimes my letters contain not mere thorns, but bludgeons. 
How are two choice slips from that noble Irish oak, which has 
more than once supphed alpeens for this meek and unoflending 
skull : — 



38 EOUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

"Theatre Royal, Donntbrook. 

" Sir, — I have just finished reading the first portion of your Tale, Lovd 
the Widower, and am much surprised at the unwarrantable strictures you 
pass therein on the corps de ballet. 

" I have been for more than ten years connected with the theatrical pro- 
fession, and I beg to assure you that the majority of the corps de ballet are 
virtuous, well-conducted girls, and, consequently, that snug cottages are 
not taken for them in the Regent's Park, 

" I also have to inform you tliat theatrical managers are in the habit 
of speaking good English, possibly better English than authors. 

" You either know nothing of the subject in question, or you assert a 
wilful falsehood. 

" I am happy to say that the characters of the corps de ballet, as also 
those of actors and actresses, are superior to the snarHngs of dyspeptic 
libellers, or the spiteful attacks and brutam fulmen of ephemeral authors. 

" I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

"A. B. C." 

The Editor of the Cornkill Magazine. 

"Theatre Rotal, Donnybrook. 

" Sir, — I have just read in the Cornhill Magazine for January, the first 
portion of a Tale written by you, and entitled Lovel the Widower. 

" In the production in question you employ all your malicious spite 
(and you have great capabilities that way) in trying to degrade the char- 
acter of the corps de ballet. When you imply that the majority of bal- 
let-girls have villas taken for them in the Regent's Park, / say you tell a de- 
liberate falsehood. 

*' Haveing been brought up to the stage from infancy, and though now 
an actress, haveing been seven years principal dancer at the opera, I am 
competent to speak on the subject. I am only surprised that so vile a 
libeller as yourself should be allowed to preside at the Dramatic Fund 
dinner on the 22nd instant. I think it would be much better if you were 
to reform your own life, instead of telling lies of those who are immeasur- 
ably your superiors. 

" Yours in supreme disgust, 

"A.D." 

The signatures of the respected writers are altered, and for 
the site of their Theatre Royal an adjacent place is named, which 
(as I may have been falsely informed) used to be famous for 
quarrels, thumps, and broken heads. But, I saj", is this an 
easy chair to sit on, when you are liable to have a pair of such 
shillelaghs flung at it? And, prithee, what was all the quarrel 
about ? In the little histor}' of ' ' Lovel the Widower " I de- 
scribed, and brought to condign punishment, a certain wretch 
of a ballet-dancer, who lived splendidly for a while on ill-gotten 
gains, had an accident, and lost her beauty, and died poor, 
deserted, ugh^, and every wa}' odious. In the same page, other 
little ballet-dancers are described, wearing homel}'^ clothing, 
doing their duty, and carrying their humble savings to the 
family at home. But nothing will content my dear corre- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 39 

spondents but to have me declare that the majority of ballet- 
dancers have villas in the Regent's Jgark, and to convict me of 
" deliberate falsehood." Suppose, for instance, I had chosen to 
introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story? I might get 
an expostulatory letter saying, " Sir, in stating that the major- 
ity of washerwomen are red-haired, you are a liar! and you 
had best not speak of ladies who are immeasurably your su- 
periors." Or suppose I had ventured to describe an illiterate 
haberdasher? One of the craft might write to me, " Sir, in 
describing haberdashers as illiterate, you utter a wilful false- 
hood. Haberdashers use much better English than authors." 
It is a mistake, to be sure. I have never said what my corre- 
spondents say I say. There is the text under their noses, but 
what if they choose to read it their own way? " Hurroo, lads ! 
Here's for a fight. There's a bald head peeping out of the hut. 
There's a bald head ! It must be Tim Maione's." And whack ! 
come down both the bludgeons at once. 

Ah me ! we wound where we never intended to strike ; we 
create anger where we never meant harm ; and these thoughts 
are the thorns in our Cushion. Out of mere malignity'-, I sup- 
pose, there is no man who would like to make enemies. But 
here, in this editorial business, you can't do otherwise : and a 
queer, sad, strange, bitter thought it is, that must cross the 
mind of many a public man : " Do what I will, be innocent or 
spiteful, be generous or cruel, there are A and B, and C and D, 
who will hate me to the end of the chapter — to the chapter's 
end — to the Finis of the page — when hate, and envy, and 
fortune, and disappointment shall be over." 



ON SCEEENS IN DINING-EOOMS. 

A GRANDSON of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, 
vicar) wrote me a little note from his country living this morn- 
ing, and the kind fellow had the precaution to write "No 
thorn " upon the envelope, so that, ere I broke the seal, my 
mind might be relieved of any anxiety lest the letter should 
contain one of ^ose lurking stabs which are so painful to the 
present gentle writer. Your epigraph, my dear P., shows your 



40 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

kind and artless nature ; but don't you see it is of no use ? 
People who are bent upon assassinating you in the manner men- 
tioned will write ' ' No thorn " upon their envelopes too ; and 
you open the ease, and presently out flies a poisoned stiletto, 
which springs into a man's bosom, and makes the wretch howl 
with anguish. When the bailiffs are after a man, they adopt all 
sorts of disguises, pop out on him from all conceivable corners, 
and tap his miserable shoulders. His wife is taken ill ; his 
sweetheart, who remarked his brilliant, too brilliant appearance 
at the Hyde Park review, will meet him at Cremorne, or where 
you will. The old friend who has owed him that money these 
five years will meet him at so-and-so and pay. By one bait or 
other the victim is hooked, netted, landed, and down goes the 
basket-lid. It is not your wife, your sweetheart, your friend 
who is going to pay you. It is Mr. Nab the bailiff. Tou 
know — you are caught. You are off in a cab to Chancery 
Lane. 

You know, I say ? Why should you know ? I make no man- 
ner of doubt you never were taken by a bailiff in your life. I 
never was. I have been in two or three debtors' prisons, but 
not on my own account. Goodness be praised ! I mean you 
can't escape your lot ; and Nab only stands here metaphori- 
cally as the watchful, certain, and untiring officer of Mr. 
Sheriff Fate. Wh}^ mj' dear Primrose, this morning along 
with your letter comes another, bearing the well-known super- 
scription of another old friend, which I open without the least 
suspicion, and what do I find? A few lines from my friend 
Johnson, it is true, but they are written on a page covered 
with feminine handwriting. " Dear Mr. Johnson," saj's the 
writer, ' ' I have just been perusing with delight a most charm- 
ing tale by the Archbishop of Cambray. It is called ' Telema- 
chus ; ' and I think it would be admirabl}^ suited to the Cornhill 
Magazine. As 3^ou know the Editor, will you have the gi'eat 
kindness, dear Mr. Johnson, to communicate with him person- 
ally (as that is much better than writing in a roundabout way 
to the Publishers, and waiting goodness knows how long for an 
answer), and state my readiness to translate this excellent and 
instructive stor3\ I do not wish to breathe a word against 
' Lovel Parsonage,' ' Framley the Widower,' or any of the 
novels which have appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, but I am 
sure ' Telemachus ' is as good as new to English readers, and in 
point of interest and morsility far " &c. &c. &c.. 

There it is. I am stabbed through Johnsori. He has lent 
himself to this attack on me. He is weak about women. Other 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 41 

strong men are. He submits to the common lot, poor fellow. 
In my reply I do not use a word of unkindness. I write him back 
gentl}^ that I fear " Telemachus " won't suit us. He can send 
the letter on to his fair correspondent. But however soft the 
answer, I question whether the wrath will be turned away. 
Will there not be a coolness between him and the lad}' ? and is 
it not possible that henceforth her fine ej-es will look with dark- 
ling glances upon the pretty orange cover of our Magazine ? 

Certain writers, they say, have a bad opinion of women. 
Now am I very whimsical in supposing that this disappointed 
candidate will be hurt at her rejection, and angry or cast down 
according to her nature? " Angr}^, indeed!" says Juno, 
gathering up her purple robes and royal raiment. " Sorry, in- 
deed ! " cries Minerva, lacing on her corselet again, and scowl- 
ing under her helmet. (I imagine the well-known Apple case 
has just been argued and decided.) "Hurt, forsooth! Do 
you suppose we care for the opinion of that hobnailed lout of a 
Paris? Do you suppose that I, the Goddess of Wisdom, can't 
make allowances for mortal ignorance, and am so base as to 
bear malice against a poor creature who knows no better? You 
little know the goddess nature when you dare to insinuate that 
our divine minds are actuated by motives so base. A love of 
justice influences us. We are above mean revenge. We are 
too magnanimous to be angiy at the award of such a judge in 
favor of such a creature." And rustling out their skirts, the 
ladies walk away together. This is all very well. You are 
bound to believe them. They are actuated by no hostility : 
not they. They bear no malice — of course not. But when 
the Trojan war occurs presentl}'^, which side will they take? 
Many brave souls will be sent to Hades. Hector will perish. 
Poor old Priam's bald numskull will be cracked, and Troy town 
will burn, because Paris prefers golden-haired Venus to ox- 
eyed Juno and gray-ej^ed Minerva. 

The last Essay of this Roundabout Series, describing the 
griefs and miseries of the editorial chair, was written, as the 
kind reader will acknowledge, in a mild and gentle, not in a 
warlike or satirical spirit. 1 showed how cudgels were applied ; 
but surely, the meek object of persecution hit no blows in re- 
turn. The beating did not hurt much, and the person assaulted 
could afford to keep his good-humor ; indeed, I admired that 
brave though illogical little actress, of the T. R. D-bl-n, for her 
fiery vindication of her profession's honor. I assure her I had 
no intention to tell 1 — s — well, let us say monosyllables — 
about my superiors : and I wish her nothing but well, and when 



42 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Macmahon (or shall it be Mulligan ?)iiioi cV Maude ascends his 
throne, I hope she may be appointed professor of English to 
the princesses of the roj^al house. Nwper — in former days — 
I too have militated ; sometimes, as I now think, unjustly ; but 
always, I vow, without personal rancor. Which of us has not 
idle words to recall, flippant jokes to regret? Have you never 
committed an imprudence? Have you never had a dispute, 
and found out that you were wrong? So much the worse for 
you. Woe be to the man qui croit toujours avoir raison. His 
anger is not a brief madness, but a permanent mania. His 
rage is not a fever-fit, but a black poison inflaming him, distort- 
ing his judgment, disturbing his rest, embittering his cup, gnaw- 
ing at his pleasures, causing him more cruel suff'ering than ever 
he can inflict on his enemy. la belle morale I As I write it, 
I think about one or two little affairs of my own. There is old 
Dr. Squaretoso (he certainly was very rude to me, and that's 
the fact) ; there is Madame Poraposa (and certainly her lady- 
ship's behavior was about as cool as cool could be) . Never 
mind, old Squaretoso : never mind, Madame Pomposa ! Here 
is a hand. Let us be friends as we once were, and have no 
more of this rancor. 

I had hardly sent that last Roundabout Paper to the printer 
(which, I submit, was written in a pacable and not unchristian 
frame of mind) , when Saturda}^ came, and with it, of course, 
my Saturday Review. I remember at New York coming down 
to breakfast at the hotel one morning, after a criticism had ap- 
peared in the New York Herald, in which an Irish writer had 
given me a dressing for a certain lecture on Swift. Ah ! my 
dear little enemy of the T. R. D., what were the cudgels 
in your little billet-doux compared to those noble New York 
shillelaghs ? All through the Union, the literar}' sons of Erin 
have marched alpeen-stoeli in hand, and in every city of 
the States they call each other and everj^body else the finest 
names. Having come to breakfast, then, in the public room, 
I sit down, and see — that the nine people opposite have all 
got New York Heralds in their hands. One dear little lady, 
whom I knew, and who sat opposite, gave a prett}^ blush, and 
popped her paper under the tablecloth. I told her I had had 
my whipping alread}^ in my own private room, and begged her 
to continue her reading. I ma}' have undergone agonies, you 
see, but every man who has been bred at an English public 
school comes awaj'^ from a private interview with Dr. Birch 
with a calm, even a smiUng face. And this is not impossible,, 
when you are prepared. You screw your courage up — j'ou go 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 43 

through the business. You come back and take j^our seat on 
the form, showing not the least S3'mptom of uneasiness or of 
previous unpleasantries. But to be caught suddenl}'- up, and 
whipped in the bosom of 5^our family — to sit down to break- 
fast, and cast j'our innocent e3^e on a paper, and find, before 
3'ou are aware, that the Saturday Monitor or Black Monday In- 
structor has hoisted 3^ou and is la3ing on — that is indeed a trial. 
Or perhaps the family has looked at the dreadful paper before- 
hand, and weakly tries to hide it. '' Where is the Instructor^ 
or the Monitor V^ sa3' 3^ou. "Where is that paper?" says 
mamma to one of the 3'oung ladies. Lucy hasn't it. Fanny 
hasn't seen it. Emily thinks that the governess has it. At 
last, out it is brought, that awful paper ! Papa is amazingly 
tickled with the article on Thomson ; thinks that show up of 
Johnson is very lively; and now — heaven be good to us ! — 
he has come to the critique on himself: — "Of all the rubbish 
which we have had from Mr. Tomkins, we do protest and vow 
that this last cartload is " &c. Ah, poor Tomkins ! — but most 
of all, ah ! poor Mrs. Tomkins, and poor Emily, and Fann3", 
and Luc3^, who have to sit b3' and see paterfamilias put to the 
torture ! 

Now, on this eventful Saturday, I did not cr3^, because it 
was not so much the Editor as the Publisher of the Cornhill 
Magazine who was brought out for a dressing ; and it is won- 
derful how gallantty one bears the misfortunes of one's friends. 
That a writer should be taken to task about his books, is fair, 
and he must abide the praise or the censure. But that a pub- 
lisher should be criticised for his dinners, and for the conver- 
sation which did not take place there, — is this tolerable press 
practice, legitimate joking, or honorable warfare? I have not 
the honor to know m3^ next-door neighbor, but I make no doubt 
that he receives his friends at dinner ; I see his wife and children 
pass constantly- ; I even know the carriages of some of the people 
who call upon him, and could tell their names. Now, suppose 
his servants were to tell mine what the doings are next door, 
who comes to dinner, what is eaten and said, and I were to 
publish an account of these transactions in a newspaper, I could 
assured^ get mone3^ for the report ; but ought I to write it, and 
what would 3"ou think of me for doing so ? 

And suppose, Mr. Saturday Reviewer — you censor morum^ 
3^ou who pique yourself (and justly and honorably in the main) 
upon your character of gentleman, as well as of writer, suppose, 
not that you 3'ourself invent and indite absurd twaddle about 
gentlemen's private meetings and transactions, but pick this 



44 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

wretched garbage out of a New York street, and hold it up for 
3^our readers' amusement — don't you think, my friend, that you 
might have been better employed? Here, in my Saturday Re- 
view^ and in an American paper subsequently sent to me, I 
light, astonished, on an account of the dinners of my friend and 
publisher, which are described as " tremendously heav}'," of the 
conversation (which does not take place) , and of the guests as- 
sembled at the table. I am informed that the proprietor of the 
Gornhill^ and the host on these occasions, is " a ver}^ good man, 
but totally unread ; " and that on my asking him whether Dr. 
Johnson was dining behind the screen, he said, " God bless my 
soul, my dear sir, there's no person by the name of Johnson 
here, nor an}' one behind the screen," and that a roar of 
laughter cut him short. I am informed hy the same New York 
correspondent, that I have touched up a contributor's article ; 
that I once said to a literary gentleman, who was proudly 
pointing to an anonymous article as his writing, "AJi! I 
thought I recognized your hoof in it. " I am told by the same 
authorit}' that the Comhill Magazine " shows symptoms of being 
on the wane," and having sold nearly a hundred thousand 
copies, he (the correspondent) " should think forty thousand 
was now about the mark." Then the graceful writer passes on 
to the dinners, at which it appears the Editor of the Magazine 
" is the great gun, and comes out with all the geniality in his 
power." 

Now suppose this charming intelligence is untrue ? Suppose 
the publisher (to recall the words of my friend the Dublin actor 
of last month) is a gentleman to the full as well informed as 
those whom he invites to his table ? Suppose he never made 
the remark, beginning — "God bless my soul, my dear sir," 
&c., nor anything resembling it? Suppose nobody roared with 
laughing ? Suppose the Editor of the Gomhill Magazine never 
" touched up" one single hne of the contribution which bears 
" marks of his hand?" Suppose he never said to any literary 
gentleman, "I recognized your hoof* in any periodical what- 
ever? Suppose the 40,000 subscribers, which the writer to 
New York " considered to be about the mark," should be be- 
tween 90,000 and 100,000 (and as he will have figures, there 
the}' are) ? Suppose this back-door gossip should be utterly 
blundering and untrue, would an}^ one wonder? Ah ! if we had 
only enjoved the happiness to number this writer among the 
contributors to our Magazine, what a cheerfulness and easy con- 
fidence his presence would impart to our meetings ! He would 
find that " poor Mr. Smith" had heard that recondite anecdote 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 45 

of Dr. Johnson behind the screen ; and as for ' ' the great gun 
of those banquets," with what geniahty should not I " come 
out " if I had an amiable companion close by me, dotting down 
my conversation for the New York Times ! 

Attack our books, Mr. Correspondent, and welcome. Thej'" 
are fair subjects for just censure or praise. But woe be to you, 
if 3^ou allow private rancors or animosities to influence you in 
the discharge of your public duty. In the little court where you 
are paid to sit as judge, as critic, j'ou owe it to your employers, 
to your conscience, to tiie honor of your calling, to deliver just 
sentences ; and you shall have to answer to heaven for your 
dealings, as surely as my Lord Chief Justice on the Bench. 
The dignity of letters, the honor of the literary calling, the 
slights put by haughty and unthinking people upon literary 
men, — don't we hear outcries upon these subjects raised daily? 
As dear Sam Johnson sits behind the screen, too proud to show 
his threadbare coat and patches among the more prosperous 
brethren of his trade, there is no want of dignity in him^ in that 
homely image of labor ill-re vrarded, genius as yet unrecognized, 
independence sturdy and uncomplaining. But Mr. Nameless, 
behind the publisher's screen uninvited, peering at the company 
and the meal, catching up scraps of the jokes, and noting down 
the guests' behavior and conversation, — what a figure his is ! 
Allons, Mr. Nameless ! Put up your note-book ; walk out of the 
hall ; and leave gentlemen alone who would be private, and 
wish you no harm. 



TUNBEIDGE TOYS. 

I WONDER whether those little silver pencil-cases with a 
movable almanac at the butt-end are still favorite implements 
with boys, and whether pedlers still hawk them about the 
country ? Are there pedlers and hawkers still, or are rustics 
and children grown too sharp to deal with them ? Those pencil- 
cases, as far as my memory serves me, were not of much use. 
The screw, upon which the movable almanac turned, was con- 
stantly getting loose. The 1 of the table would work from its 
moorings, under Tuesday or Wednesday, as the case might be, 
and you would find, on examination, that Th. or W. was the 



46 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

23 J of the month (which was absurd on the face of the thing), 
and in a word j^our cherished pencil-case an utterly unreliable 
time-keeper. Nor was this a matter of wonder. Consider the 
position of a pencil-case in a bo3''s pocket. You had hard-bake 
in it ; marbles, kept in 3'our purse when the monej^ was all 
gone ; 3^our mother's purse, knitted so fondl}' and supplied with 
a little bit of gold, long since — prodigal little son ! — scattered 
amongst the swine — I mean amongst brand3'-balls, open tarts, 
three-cornered puffs, and similar abominations. You had a 
top and string ; a knife ; a piece of cobbler's wax ; two or 
three bullets ; a Little Warbler ; and I, for my part, remember, 
for a considerable period, a brass-barrelled pocket-pistol (which 
would fire beautifully, for with it I shot ofl[* a button from Butt 
Major's jacket) ; — with all these things, and ever so many 
more, clinking and rattling in your pockets, and yoMY hands, 
of course, keeping them in perpetual movement, how could you 
expect 3'our movable almanac not to be twisted out of its place 
now and again — yowv pencil-case to be bent — 3'Our liquorice 
water not to leak out of 3^our bottle over the cobbler's wax, 
your buirs-e3"es not to ram up the lock and barrel of 3^our pistol, 
and so forth. 

In the montli of June, thirt3'-seven 3'ears ago, I bought one 
of those pencil-cases from a bo3' whom I shall call Hawker, and 
who was in m3' form. Is he dead? Is he a millionnaire ? Is 
he a bankrupt now ? He was an immense screw at school, and 
I believe to this da3^ that the value of the thing for which I 
owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in realit3^ 
not one-and-nine. 

I certainl3^ enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused 
m3'self with twiddling round the movable calendar. But this 
pleasure wore off. The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and 
Hawker, a large and violent bo3", was exceedingl3^ unpleasant 
as a creditor. His constant remark was, " When are 3'ou going 
to pay me that three-and-sixpence? What sneaks 3'our rela- 
tions must be ? The3' come to see 3^ou. You go out to them 
on Saturda3's and Sundays, and the3'^ never give 3'ou anything ! 
Don't tell 7ne^ you little humbug ! " and so forth. The truth is 
that m3'' relations were respectable ; but my parents w^ere mak- 
ing a tour in Scotland ; and my friends in London, whom I 
used to go and see, were most kind to me, certainl3% but some- 
how never tipped me. That term, of Ma3^ to August, 1823, 
passed in agonies then, in consequence of m3^ debt to Hawker. 
What was the pleasure of a calendar pencil-case in comparison 
with the doubt and torture of mind occasioned by the sense of 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 47 



the debt, and the constant reproach of that fellow's scowlin^*- 
eyes and gloomy, coarse reminders? How was I to pay off 
such a debt out of sixpence a week ? ludicrous ! Why did not 
some one come to see me, and tip me? Ah! my dear sir, if 
you have any Httle friends at school, go and see them, and do 
the natural thing by them. You won't miss the sovereio-n. 
You don't know what a blessing it will be to them. Don't 
fancy the}^ are too old — try 'em. And they will remember 
you, and bless you in future days ; and their gratitude shall 
accompan}^ 3'our dreary after life ; and they shall meet you 
kindl}^ when thanks for kindness are scant. O mercj^ ! shall 
I ever forget that sovereign you gave me, Captain Bob? or the 
agonies of being in debt to Hawker? In that very term, a 
relation of mine was going to India. I actually was fetched 
from school in order to take leave of him. I am afraid I told 
Hawker of this circumstance. I own I speculated upon my 
friend's giving me a pound. A pound? Pooh! A relation 
going to India, and deeply affected at parting from his darling 
kinsman, might give five pounds to the dear fellow ! . . . There 
was Hawker when I came back — of course there he was. As 
he looked in m}^ scared face, his turned livid with rage. He 
muttered curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy. 
My relation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appoint- 
ment, asked me with much interest about my progress at school, 
heard me construe a passage of Eutropius, the pleasing Latin 
work on which I was then engaged ; gave me a God bless you, 
and sent me back to school ; upon m}' word of honor, without 
so much as a half-crown ! It is all very well, my dear sir, to 
say that boys contract habits of expecting tips from their 
parents' friends, that they become avaricious, and so forth. 
Avaricious ! fudge ! Boys contract habits of tart and toffee 
eating, which they do not carry into after life. On the CQp- 
trary, I wish I did like 'em. What raptures of pleasure O^fte 
could have now for five shillings, if one could but pick it off 
the pastry-cook's tray ! No. If you have any little friends at 
school, out with 3^our half-crowns, my friend, and impart to 
those little ones the little fleeting joys of their age. 

WeU, then. At the beginning of August, 1823, Bartlemy- 
tide holidays came, and I was to go to my parents, who were 
at Tunbridge Wells. My place in the coach was taken by my 
tutor's servants — "Bolt-in-Tun," Fleet Street, seven o'clock 
in the morning, was the word. My Tutor, the Rev. Edward 

P , to whom I hereby present my best compliments, had a 

parting interview with me ; gave me my httle account for my 



48 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

governor : the remaining part of the coach-hire ; five shillings 
for ni}' own expenses ; and some five-and-twent}' shillings on 
an old account which had been overpaid, and was to be restored, 
to my family. 

Away I ran and paid Hawker his three-and-six. Ouf ! what 
a weight it was off m}^ mind ! (He was a Norfolk boy, and 
used to go home from Mrs. Nelson's "Bell Inn," Aldgate — 
but that is not to the point.) The next morning, of course, we 
were an hour before the time. I and another boy shared a 
hackney-coach ; two-and-six : porter for putting luggage on 
coach, threepence. I had no more money of my own left. 
Rasherwell, my companion, went into the " Bolt-in-Tun " coffee- 
room, and had a good breakfast. I couldn't ; because, though 
I had five-and-twenty shillings of my parents' money, I had 
none of m}^ own, you see. 

I certainly intended to go without breakfast, and still re- 
member how strongl}^ I had that resolution in mj' mind. But 
there was that hour to wait. A beautiful August morning — I 
am verj'^ hungry. There is Rasherwell ' ' tucking " awaj^ in the 
coffee-room. I pace the street, as sadly almost as if I had 
been coming to school, not going thence. I turn into a court 
by mere chance — I vow it was by mere chance — and there I 
see a coffee-shop with a placard in the window, Coffee,, Two- 
•pence. Round of buttered toast,, Twopence. And here am I, 
hungry, penniless, with five-and-twenty shillings of my parents' 
mone}^ in my pocket. 

What would you have done ? You see I had had m}^ mone}^, 
and spent it in that pencil-case affair. The five-and-twenty 
shillings were a trust — b}' me to be handed over. 

But then would my parents wish their only child to be act- 
ually without breakfast? Having this money, and being so 
hungry, so very hungry, mightn't I take ever so little ? Mightn't 
I at home eat as much as I chose ? 

Well, I went into the coffee-shop, and spent fourpence. I 
remember the taste of the coffee and toast to this day — a pe- 
culiar, muddy, not-sweet-enough, most fragrant coflTee — a rich, 
rancid, yet not-buttered-enough, dehcious toast. The waiter 
had nothing. At any rate, fourpence I know was the sum I 
spent. And the hunger appeased, I got on the coach a guilty 
being. 

At the last stage, — what is its name? I have forgotten in 
seven-and-thirty years, — there is an inn with a little green 
and trees before it ; and by the trees there is an open carriage. 
It is our carriage. Yes, there are Prince and Blucher, the 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 49 

horses ; and my parents in the carriage. Oh ! how I had been 
counting the days until this one came ! Oh ! how happy had I 
been to see them yesterday ! But there was that fourpence. 
All the journey down the toast had choked me, and the coffee 
poisoned me. 

I was in such a state of remorse about the fourpence, that 
I forgot the maternal joy and caresses, the tender paternal 
voice. I pull out the twenty-four shillings and eightpence with 
a trembling hand. 

"Here's your money," I gasp out, " which Mr. P owes 

you, all but fourpence. I owed three-and-sixpence to Hawker 
out of my money for a pencil-case, and I had none left, and I 
took fourpence of yours, and had some coffee at a shop." 

I suppose I must have been choking whilst uttering this 
confession. 

"My dear bo}^," says the governor, "why didn't 3'OU go 
and breakfast at the hotel ? " 

" He must be starved," saj^s my mother. 

I had confessed ; I had been a prodigal ; I had been taken 
back to my parents' arms again. It was not a very great crime 
as yet, or a very long career of prodigalit}^ ; but don't we know 
that a boy who takes a pin which is not his own, will take a thou- 
sand pounds when occasion serves, bring his parents' gray heads 
with sorrow to the grave, and carry his own to the gallows? 
Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon whom our friend Mr. 
Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began by playing pitch- 
and-toss on a tombstone : playing fair, for what we know : and 
even for that sin he was promptly caned by the beadle. The 
bamboo was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out 
of him. From pitch- and-toss he proceeded to manslaughter if 
necessary : to highway robbery ; to Tyburn and the rope there. 
Ah ! heaven be thanked, my parents' heads are still above the 
grass, and mine still out of the noose. 

As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge Wells Common 
and the rocks, the strange familiar place which I remember 
forty years ago. Boys saunter over the green with stumps 
and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop by on the riding-master's 
hacks. I protest it is Cramp, Riding Master, as it used to be 
in the reign of George IV., and that Centaur Cramp must be at 
least a hundred years old. Yonder comes a footman with a 
bundle of novels from the library. Are they as good as our 
novels ? Oh ! how delightful they were ! Shades of Valancour, 
awful ghost of Manfroni, how I shudder at your appearance ! 
Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, how often has this al- 



50 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

most infantile hand tried to depict you in a Polish cap and 
richl}' embroidered tights ! And as for Corinthian Tom in 
light blue pantaloons and Hessians, and Jerr}^ Hawthorn from 
the countr}^, can all the fashion, can all the splendor of real life 
which these e3"es have subsequentl}" beheld, can all the wit 
I have heard or read in later times, compare with your fashion, 
with 3'our brillianc}', with your delightful grace, and sparkling 
vivacious rattle? 

Who knows ? Thej^ may have kept those very books at the 
librar}^ still — at the well-remembered library on the Pantiles, 
where they sell that delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. I will 
go and see. I went my way to the Pantiles, the queer little 
old-world Pantiles, where, a hundred 3^ears since, so much good 
company came to take its pleasure. Is it possible, that in the 
past centur}' , gentlefolks of the first rank (as I read lately in 
a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine) assembled 
here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing, fiddling, 
and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters perform- 
ing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but where is 
the fine company? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, 
and magnificent embroidered gamesters? A half-dozen of 
children and their nurses are listening to the musicians ; an old 
lady or two in a poke bonnet passes, and for the rest, I see but 
an uninteresting population of native tradesmen. As for the 
librar}^, its window is full of pictures of burl}' theologians, and 
their works, sermons, apologues, and so forth. Can I go in 
and ask the 3'oung ladies at the counters for " Manfroni, or the 
One-Handed Monk," and "Life in London, or the Adventures 
of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, Esq., and their friend 

' Bob Logic?" — absurd. I turn awa}^ abashed from the case- 
ment — from the Pantiles — no longer Pantiles, but Parade. 
I stroll over the Common and survey the beautiful purple hills 
around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas, which have 
sprung up over this charming ground since first I saw it. 
What an admirable scene of peace and plent}^ ! What a de- 
licious air breathes over the heath, blows the cloud shadows 
across it, and murmurs through the full-clad trees ! Can the 
world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful? I see a por- 
tion of it when I look up from the window at which I write. 
But fair scene, green woods, bright terraces gleaming in sun- 

, shine, and purple clouds swollen with summer rain — nay, the 
ver}'' pages over which m}^ head bends — disappear from before 
my ej^es. Thej^ are looking backwards, back into fort}^ 3^ears 
off, into a dark room, into a little house hard by on the Com- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 51 

mon here, in the Bartlemj^-tide holidays. The parents have 
gone to town for two daj's : the house is all his own, his own 
and a grim old maid-servant's, and a little boy is seated at 
night in the lonely drawing-room, poring over " Manfroni, or 
the One-Handed Monk," so frightened that he scarcely dares 
to turn round. 



DE JUVENTUTE. 

Our last paper of this veracious and roundabout series re- 
lated to a period which can only be historical to a great number 
of readers of this Magazine. Four I saw at the station to-day 
with orange-covered books in their hands, who can but have 
known George IV. by books, and statues, and pictures. Elder- 
ly gentlemen were in their prime, old men in their middle age, 
when he reigned over us. His image remains on coins ; on a 
picture or two hanging here and there in a Club or old-fashioned 
dining-room ; on horseback, as at Trafalgar Square, for ex- 
ample, where I defy any monarch to look more uncomfortable. 
He turns up in sundry memoirs and histories which have been 
published of late daj^s ; in Mr. Massey's " History ;" in the 
' ' Buckingham and Grenville Correspondence ; " and gentlemen 
who have accused a certain writer of disloyalty are referred to 
those volumes to see whether the picture drawn of George is 
overcharged. Charon has paddled him off; he has mingled 
with the crowded repubUc of the dead. His effigy smiles from 
a canvas or two. Breechless he bestrides his steed in Trafalgar 
Square. I brieve he still wears his robes at Madame Tussaud's 
(Madame herself having quitted Baker Street and life, and found 
him she modelled t'other side the St3^gian stream). On the 
head of a five-shilling piece we still occasionally come upon him, 
with St. George, the dragon-slayer, on the other side of the 
coin. Ah me ! did this George slay many dragons? Was he 
a brave, heroic champion, and rescuer of virgins ? Well ! well ! 
have you and I overcome all the dragons that assail us ? come 
alive and victorious out of all the caverns which we have 
entered in life, and succored, at risk of Ufe and limb, all poor 
distressed persons in whose naked hmbs the dragon Povert}^ is 
about to fasten his fangs, whom the dragon Crime is poisoning 



52 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

with his horrible breath, and about to crunch up and devour? 
O m}^ royal liege ! O m}' gracious prince and wanior ! Tou 
a champion to fight that monster? Your feeble spear ever 
pierce that slimy paunch or plated back ? See how the flames 
come gurgling out of his red-hot brazen throat ! What a roar ! 
Nearer and nearer he trails, with eyes flaming like the lamps of 
a railroad engine. How he squeals, rushing out through the 
darkness of his tunnel ! Now he is near. Now he is here. 
And now — what? — lance, shield, knight, feathers, horse and 
all? O horror, horror! Next da}^, round the monster's cave, 
there lie a few bones more. You, who wish to keep yours in 
your skins, be thankful that 3'ou are not called upon to go out 
and fight dragons. Be grateful that they don't sallj^ out and 
swallow you. Keep a wise distance from their caves, lest you 
pay too dearly for approaching them. Remember that j^ears 
passed, and whole districts were ravaged, before the warrior 
came who was able to cope with the devouring monster. When 
that knight does make his appearance, with all mj heart let us 
go out and welcome him with our best songs, huzzas, and laurel 
wreaths, and eagerly recognize his valor and victor3\ But he 
comes onl}' seldom. Countless knights were slain before St. 
George won the battle. In the battle of life are we all going to 
try for the honors of championship ? If we can do our duty, 
if we can keep our place pretty honorablj^ through the combat, 
let us sa}^, Laus Deo I at the end of it, as the firing ceases, and 
the night falls over the field. 

The old were middle-aged, the elderty were in their prime, 
then, thirty years since, when yon royal George was still fight- 
ing the dragon. As for you, m}' pretty lass, with your sauc}^ 
hat and golden tresses tumbled in your net, and you, my spruce 
3^oung gentleman in your mandarin's cap (the young folks at 
the country-place where I am staying are so attired), your 
parents were unknown to each other, and wore short frocks 
and short jackets, at the date of this five-shilling piece. Onl}- 
to-day I met a dog-cart crammed with children — children with 
moustaches and mandarin caps — children with saucy hats and 
hair-nets — children in short frocks and knickerbockers (surely 
the prettiest boy's dress that has appeared these hundred 3'ears) 
— children fi*om twenty years of age to six ; and father, with 
mother by his side, driving in front — and on father's counte- 
nance I saw that very laugh which I remember perfectly in the 
time when this crown-piece was coined — in Ms time, in King 
George's time, when we were school-boys seated on the same 
form. The smile was just as broad, as bright, as jolly, as I 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 53 

remember it in the past — unforgotten, though not seen or 
thought of, for how many decades of years, and quite and in- 
stantly familiar, though so long out of sight. 

Any contemporary of that coin who takes it up and reads 
the inscription round the laurelled head, " Georgius IV. Bri- 
tanniarum Rex. Fid. Def. 1823," if he will but look steadily 
enough at the round, and utter the proper incantation, I dare 
say may conjure back his life there. Look well, my elderly 
friend, and tell me what you see? First, I see a Sultan, with 
hair, beautiful hair, and a crown of laurels round his head, and 
his name is Georgius Rex. Fid. Def. , and so on. Now the Sultan 
has disappeared ; and what is that I see ? A boy, — a boy in a 
jacket. He is at a desk ; he has gi'eat books before him, Latin 
and Greek books and dictionaries. Yes, but behind the great 
books, which he pretends to read, is a little one, with pictures, 
which he is really reading. It is — yes, I can read now — it is 
the " Heart of Mid Lothian," by the author of " Waverley " — 
or, no, it is " Life in London, or the Adventures of Corinthian 
Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, and their friend Bob Logic," by 
Pierce Egan ; and it has pictures — oh ! such funny pictures ! 
As he reads, there comes behind the boy, a man, a dervish, in 
a black gown, like a woman, and a black square cap, and he 
has a book in each hand , and he seizes the boy who is reading 
the picture-book, and lays his head upon one of his books, and 
smacks it with the other. The boy makes faces, and so that 
picture disappears. 

Now the boy has grown bigger. He has got on a black 
gown and cap, something like the dervish. He is at a table, 
with ever so many bottles on it, and fruit, and tobacco ; and 
other young dervishes come in. They seem as if they were 
singing. To them enters an old moollah, he takes down tlieir 
names, and orders them all to go to bed. What is this? a car- 
riage, with four beautiful horses all galloping— a man in red is 
blowing a trumpet. Many young men are on the carriage — 
one of them is driving the horses. Surely they won't drive 
into that? — ah! they have all disappeared. And now I see 
one of the young men alone. He is walking in a street — a 
dark street — presently a hght comes to a window. There is 
the shadow of a lady who passes. He stands there till the light 
goes out. Now he is in a room scribbling on a piece of paper, 
and kissing a miniature every now and then. They seem to be 
lines each pretty much of a length. I can read heart, smart, 
dart ; Mary, fairy ; Cupid, stupid ; true, you ; and never mind 
^hat more. Bah ! it is bosh. Now see, he has got a gown on 



54 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

ao"ain, and a wig of white hair on his head, and he is sitting 
with other dervishes in a great room full of them, and on a 
throne in the middle is an old Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a 
desk, and he wears a wig too — and the 3'oung man gets up 
and speaks to him. And now what is here ? He is in a room 
with ever so many children, and the miniature hanging up. 
Can it be a likeness of that woman who is sitting before that 
copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from which she is 
pourino- hot liquor into cups ? Was she ever a fairy ? She is as 
fat as °a hippopotamus now. He is sitting on a divan by the 
fire. He has a paper on his knees. Read the name of the 
paper. It is the Superfine Review. It inclines to think that 
Mr. Dickens is not a true gentleman, that Mr. Thackeray 
is not a true gentleman, and that when the one is pert and 
the other is arch, we, the gentlemen of the Superfine Review., 
think, and think rightly, that we have some cause to be in- 
dignant. The great cause why modern humor and modern 
sentimentalism repel us, is that they are unwarrantably familiar. 
Now, Mr. Sterne, the Superfine Reviewer thinks, " was a true 
sentimentalist, because he was above all things a true gentle- 
man." The flattering inference is obvious : let us be thankful 
for having an elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if 
not too old, to imitate his high-bred politeness and catch his 
unobtrusive grace. If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know 
who is not. If we repel by pertness, we know who never does. 
If our language offends, we know whose is always modest. O 
pity ! The vision has disappeared off the silver, the images of 
youth and the past are vanishing awaj^ ! We who have lived 
before railways were made, belong to another world. In how 
many hours could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to 
London, with a light carriage built expressly, and relays of 
horses longing to gallop the next stage? Do you remember 
Sir Somebody, the coachman of the Age, who took our half- 
crown so affably ? It was only 3- esterday ; but what a gulf be- 
tween now and then ! TJien was the old world. Stage-coaches, 
more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, 
knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, 
Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth — all these belong 
to the old period. I will concede a halt in the midst of it, and 
allow that gunpowder and printing tended to modernize the 
world. But 3^our railroad starts the new era, and we of a cer- 
tain age belong to the new time and the old one. We are of 
the time of chivalry as well as the Black Prince or Sir Walter 
Manny. We are of the age of steam. We have stepped out 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 65 

of the old world on to "Brunei's" vast deck, and across the 
waters ingens patet tellus. Towards what new continent are we 
wendmg? to what new laws, new manners, new politics, vast 
new expanses of liberties unknown as yet, or onl}- surmised? 
I used to know a man who had invented a flying-machine. 
" Sir," he would say, " give me but five hundred pounds, and 
I will make it. It is so simple of construction that I tremble 
daily lest some other person should light upon and patent my 
discovery." Perhaps faith was wanting ; perhaps the five hun- 
dred pounds. He is dead, and somebody else must make the 
flj^ing-machine. But that will onl}^ be a step forward on the 
journey already begun since we quitted the old world. There 
it lies on the other side of yonder embankments. You 3'oung 
folks have never seen it ; and Waterloo is to jo\x no more than 
Agincourt, and George IV. than Sardanapalus. We elderlj^ 
people have lived in that prserailroad world, which has passed 
into limbo and vanished from under us. I tell you it was firm 
under our feet once, and not long ago. They have raised those 
railroad embankments up, and shut oflf the old world that was 
behind them. Climb up that bank on which the irons are laid, 
and look to the other side — it is gone. There is no other 
side. Try and catch yesterday. Where is it? Here is a Times 
newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is Tuesda}^ 27th. 
Suppose you deny there was such a da}^ as yesterday? 

We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient 
world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. 
The children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, " Tell 
us, grandpapa, about the old world." And we shall mumble 
our old stories ; and we shall drop off one by one ; and there 
will be fewer and fewer of us, and these verj' old and feeble. 
There will be but ten prserailroadites left : then three — then 
two — then one — then ! If the hippopotamus had the least 
sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide 
or his face), I think he' would go down to the bottom of his 
tank, and never come up again. Does he not see that he be- 
longs to bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a 
body is out of place in these times ? What has he in common 
with the brisk j'oung life surrounding him? In the watches of 
the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on 
one leg, when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the mon- 
keys have ceased their chatter, — he, I mean the hippopotamus, 
and the elephant, and the long-necked gkaflfe, perhaps may lay 
their heads together and have a colloquy about the great silent 
antediluAian world which they remember, where mighty mon- 



56 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

sters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on the 
banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before 
men were made to slaj them. We who lived before railways 
are antediluvians — we must pass away. We are growing 
scarcer every da}- ; and old — old — very old relicts of the times 
when George was still fighting the Dragon. 

Not long since, a company of horse-riders paid a visit to 
our watering-place. We went to see '',hem, and I bethought 
me that 3'Oung Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might 
like also to witness the performance. A pantomime is not 
alwa^^s amusing to persons who have attained a certain age ; 
but a bo}^ at a pantomime is always amused and amusing, and 
to see his pleasure is good for most h3"pochondriacs. 

We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that he might join 
us, and the kind lady replied that the bo}^ had already been at 
the morning performance of the equestrians, but was most 
eager to go in the evening likewise. And go he did ; and 
laughed at all Mr. Merr3^man's remarks, though he remembered 
them with remarkable accuracy, and insisted upon waiting to 
the very end of the fun, and was only induced to retire just 
before its conclusion by representations that the ladies of the 
party would be incommoded if they were to wait and undei^o 
the rush and trample of the crowd round about. When this 
fact was pointed out to him, he yielded at once, though with a 
heav}' heart, his eyes looking longinglj' towards the ring as 
we retreated out of the booth. We were scarcely clear of the 
place, when we heard "God save the Queen," played by the 
equestrian band, the signal that all was over. Our companion 
entertained us with scraps of the dialogue on our way home — 
precious crumbs of wit which he had bro ight away from that 
feast. He laughed over them again as we walked un'^ :r the 
stars. He has them now, and takes them out of the pocket 
of his memor}^, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a senti- 
mental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school by 
this time ; the holidaj's are over ; and Doctor Birch's young 
friends have reassembled. 

Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to 
grin ! As the jaded Merryman uttered them to the old gentle- 
man with the whip, some of the old folks in the audience, I 
dare say, indulged in reflections of theii' own. There was one 
joke — I utterl}^ forget it — but it began with Merryman sa}''- 
ing what he had for dinner. He had mutton for dinner, at one 
o'clock, after which "he had to come to business," And then 
came the point. Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch's, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 57 

Market Rodborough, if you read this, will you please send me 
a line, and let me know what was the joke Mr. Menyman 
made about having his dinner? Ton remember well enough. 
But do I want to know? Suppose a boy takes a favorite, 
long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket, and offers you 
a bite? Merci! The fact is, I don't care much about knowing 
that joke of Mr. Merryman's. 

But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, 
and his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about 
Mr. M. in private life — about his wife, lodgings, earnings, 
and general history, and I dare saj^ was forming a picture of 
those in my mind : — wife cooking the mutton : children wait- 
ing for it ; Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth ; during 
which contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and 
Mr. M., resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over 
head and heels. Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to 
indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motle}^, and moun- 
tebanking. Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes ; Opposi- 
tion leaders prepare and polish them ; Tabernacle preachers 
must arrange them in their minds before they utter them. All 
I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these perform- 
ers thoroughly, and out of his uniform : that preacher, and 
why in his travels this and that point struck him ; wherein hes 
his power of pathos, humor, eloquence ; — that Minister of 
State, and what moves him, and how his private heart is work- 
ing ; — I would only say that, at a certain time of life certain 
things cease to interest : but about some things when we cease 
to care, what will be the use of life, sight, hearing? Poems 
are written, and we cease to admire. Lady Jones invites us, 
and we yawn ; sh^ ceases to invite us, and we are resigned. 
The -'Zst time I saw a ballet at the opera — oh ! it is many 
years ago — I fell asleep in the stalls, wagging my head in 
insane dreams, and I hope affording amusement to the com- 
pany, while the feet of five hundred nymphs were cutting flic- 
flacs on the stage at a few paces' distance. Ah, I remember 
a diflferent state of things ! Credite posteri. To see those 
nymphs — gracious powers, how beautiful they were! That 
leering, painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing, 
cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out 
of time — that an opera-dancer? Pooh ! My dear Walter, the 
great difference between my time and yours, who will enter life 
some two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women 
and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out 
of tune ; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of 



58 KOUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how 
an^'bod^^ can like to look at them. And as u)v laughing at 
me for falling asleep, I can't understand a man of sense domg 
otherwise. In m^ time, a la bonne heure. iii the reign of 
George IV., I give you. my honor, all the dancers at the opera 
were as beautiful as Houris. Even in William IV.'s time, 
when I think of Duvernaj' prancing in as the Bayadere, — I 
say it was a vision of loveliness such as mortal ej^es can't see 
now-a-daj'S. How well I remember the tune to which she used 
to appear! Kaled used to say to the Sultan, -^ My lord, a 
troop of those dancing and singing gurls called Bayaderes 
approaches," and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping 
of my heart, in she used to dance ! There has never been 
anything like it — never. There never will be — I laugh to 
scorn old people who tell me about your Noblet, your Mon- 
tessu, your Vestris, your Parisot — pshaw, the senile twad- 
dlers ! " And the impudence of the 3'oung men, with their music 
and their dancers of to-day ! I tell you the women are dreary 
old creatures. I tell you one air in an opera is just like another, 
and they send all rational creatures to sleep. Ah, Ronzi de 
Begnis, thou lovel}- one ! Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel ! 
Ah, Malibran ! Nay, I will come to modern times, and ac- 
knowledge that Lablache was a very good singer thirty j'^ears 
ago (though Porto was the boy for me) : and then we had 
Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer. 

But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of 
stage beauty since the days of George IV. Think of Sontag ! 
I remember her in Otello and the Donna del Lago in '28. I 
remember being behind the Scenes at the opera (where numbers 
of us young fellows of fashion used to go) , and seeing Sontag 
let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous to her murder 
by Donzelli. Young fellows have never seen beauty like that^ 
heard such a voice, seen such hair, such ej^es. Don't tell me ! 
A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., 
ought he not to know better than you J^oung lads who have 
seen nothing? The deterioration of women is lamentable ; and 
the conceit of the 3'oung fellows more lamentable still, that 
they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time as 
good as ours. 

Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered. with 
angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I remember the 
Adelphi, and the actresses there : when I think of Miss Chester, 
and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty 
glorious pupils — of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 59 

young Taglioui, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more ! One 
much-admired being of those daj's I confess I never cared for 
and that was the chief male dancer — a ver}" important person- 
age then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and 
feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies, and 
who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever. And this frank 
admission ought to show that I am not 3'our mere twaddlino- 
laudator temporis acti — 3'our old fogy who can see no o-ood 
except in his own time. 

They say that claret is better now-a-days, and cookery much 
improved since the days of my monarch — of George IV. Pastry 
Cookery is certainly not so good. I have often eaten half a 
crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school 
pastry-cook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been 
very good, for could I do as much now? I passed by the 
pastry-cook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school. 
It looked a very dingy old baker's ; misfortunes may have come 
over him — those penny tarts certainly' did not look so nice as I 
remember them : but he may have grown careless as he has 
grown old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years 
of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning. 

Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we 
constantly grumbled at the quantitj^ of the food in our master's 
house — which on my conscience I believe was excellent and 
plentiful — and how we tried once or twice to eat him out of 
house and home. At the pastry-cook's we may have over-eaten 
ourselves (I have admitted half a crown's worth for 1113' own 
part, but I don't like to mention the real figure for fear of per- 
verting the present generation of bo3'S b3' m3' monstrous con- 
fession) — we may have eaten too much, I sa3\ We did ; but 
what then ? The school apothecary was sent for : a couple of 
small globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the 
morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught 
was an actual pleasure. 

For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which 
were prett3^ much in old times as the3^ are now (except cricket, 
par exemple — and I wish the present 3'outh joy of their bowling, 
and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with 
light field-pieces next) , there were novels — ah ! I trouble 3'ou 
to find such novels in the present da3' ! O Scottish Chiefs, 
di(^n't we weep over you ! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't I 
and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of 3^ou, as I have said? 
EflTorts, feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our 
friends. <*I say, old boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the 



60 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Inquisition," or, " Draw us Don Quixote and the windmills, 
you know," amateurs would sa}', to boys who had a love of 
drawing. " Peregrine Pickle" we liked, our fathers admiring 
it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun ; but I 
think I was rather bewildered by it, though " Roderick Ran- 
dom " was and remains delightful. I don't remember having 
Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that 
divine were not considered decent for young people. Ah ! not 
against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I 
say a word in disrespect. But I am thankful to live in times 
when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call 
blushes on women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked 
allusions to honest boys. Then, above all, we had Walter 
Scott, the kindly, the generous, the pure — the companion of 
what countless delightful hours ; the purveyor of how much 
happiness ; the friend whom we recall as the constant bene- 
factor of our youth ! How well I remember the type and the 
brownish paper of the old duodecimo " Tales of my Landlord ! *' 
1 have never dared to read the "Pirate," and the "Bride of 
Lammermoor," or " Kenilworth," from that day to this, be- 
cause the finale is unhappy, and people die, and aie murdered 
at the end. But " Ivanhoe," and " Quentin Durward ! " Oh ! 
for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those books 
again ! Those books, and perhaps those e3'es with which we 
read them ; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes ! It may 
be the tart was good ; but how fresh the appetite was ! If the 
gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able to 
write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen of 
centuries. The boy-critic loves the story : grown up, he loves 
the author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is estab- 
lished between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for 
life. I meet people now who don't care for Walter Scott, or the 
" Arabian Nights ; " I am sorry for them, unless they in their 
time have found their romancer — their charming Scheherazade. 
B}^ the way, Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the 
favorite novelist in the fourth form now ? Have 3^ou got an}^- 
thing so good and kindty as dear Miss Edgeworth's Frank ? It 
used to belong to a fellow's sisters generally ; but though he 
pretended to despise it, and said, "Oh, stuff for girls!" he 
read it ; and I think there were one or two passages which would 
try my ej^es now, were I to meet with the little book. ■ 

As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only m}'^ witt}'^ waj^ of 
calling Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the 
other da}^ on purpose to get it ; but somehow, if you will press 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 61 

the question so closely, on reperusal, Torn and Jerrj^ is not so 
brilliant as I had supposed it to be. The pictures are just as 
fine as ever ; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jen^ Haw- 
thorn and Corinthian Tom with delight, after many years' 
absence. But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing 
to me ; I even thought it a little vulgar — well ! well ! other 
writers have been considered vulgar — and as a description of the 
sports and amusements of London in the ancient times, more 
curious than amusing. 

But the pictures ! — oh ! the pictures are noble still ! First, 
there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and 
leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at 
Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for 
the career of pleasure and fashion. The park ! delicious ex- 
citement ! The theatre ! the saloon ! ! the green-room ! ! ! Rap- 
turous bliss — the opera itself ! and then perhaps to Temple 
Bar, to knock down a Charley there ! Tliere are Jerrj^ and Tom, 
with their tights and little cocked hats, coming from the opera 
— very much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited 
now. There they are at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of 
high-bred personages, with the Duke of Clarence himself look- 
ing at them dancing. Now, strange change, they are in Tom 
Cribb's parlor, where they don't seem to be a whit less at home 
than in fashion's gilded halls : and now they are at Newgate, 
seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' legs previous to 
execution. What hardened ferocity in the countenance of the 
desperado in j^ellow breeches ! What compunction in the face 
of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), 
and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain ! Now 
we haste away to merrier scenes : to Tattersall's (ah gracious 
powers ! what a funny fellow that actor was who performed 
Dicky Green in that scene at the play !) ; and now we are 
at a private part}^ at which Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and 
very gracefully, too, as you must confess,) with Corinthian 
Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the 
piano ! 

" After," the text says, " the Oxonian had played several 
pieces of livel}^ music, he requested as a favor that Kate and 
his friend Tom would perform a waltz. Kate without any 
hesitation immediately stood up. Tom offered his hand to his 
fascinating partner, and the dance took place. The plate con- 
ve3^s a correct representation of the ' gay scene ' at that precise 
moment. The anxiet}^ of the Oxonian to witness the attitudes of 
the elegant pair had nearly put a stop to their movements. On 



62 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

turning round from the pianoforte and presenting his comical 
mug^ Kate could scarcel}^ suppress a laugh." 

And no wonder ; just look at it now (as I have copied it to 
the best of m}' humble abilit}-) , and compare Master Logic's 
countenance and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom ! * 
Now every London man is weary and blase. There is an enjo}-- 
ment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which contrasts 
strangely with our feelings of 1860. Here, for instance, is a 
specimen of their talk and walk. " 'If,' says Logic — ' if enjoy- 
ment is 3'our motto., you may make the most of an evening at 
Vauxhall, more than at any other place in the metropolis. It 
is all free and easy. Sta}^ as long as you like, and depart when 
you think proper.' — ' Your description is so flattering,' replied 
Jerry, ' that I do not care how soon the time arrives for us to 
start.' Logic proposed a ' bit of a strolV in order to get rid of 
an hour or two, which was immediate^ accepted by Tom and 
Jerry. A turn or two in Bond Street, a stroll through Picca- 
dilly, a look in at Tattersall's, a ramble through Pall Mall, and 
a strut on the Corinthian path, fully occupied the time of our 
heroes until the hour for dinner arrived, when a few glasses of 
Tom's rich wines soon put them on the qui vive. Vauxhall 
was then the object in view, and the Trio started, bent upon 
enjo3'ing the pleasures which this place so amplj' affords." 

How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capi- 
tal<«; bring out the writer's wit and relieve the e3'e ! The}' are 
as good as Jokes, though 3'ou mayn't quite perceive the point. 
Mark the varieties of lounge in which the young men indulge 
— now a stroll.) then a look in., then a ramble., and presently a 
strut. When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have 
read in an old Magazine, " the Prince's lounge" was a peculiar 
manner of walking which the 3'Oung bucks imitated. At Wind- 
sor George III. had a cat's fath — a sl3^ early walk which the 
good old king took in the gray morning before his household 
was astir. What v\^as the Corinthian path here recorded? 
Does any antiquary know? And what were the rich wines 
which our friends took, and which enabled them to enjoy Vaux- 
hall? Vauxhall is gone, but the wines, which could occasion 
such a delightful perversion of the intellect as to enable it to 
enjo3' ample pleasures there, what were the}"? 

So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the 
rustic, is fairlj' knocked up b3' all this excitement and is forced 
to go home, and the last picture represents him getting into the 
coach at the '' White Horse Cellar," he being one of six inside j 

♦ This refers to an illustrated edition of the work. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 63 

whilst his friends shake him b}^ the hand ; whilst the sailor 
mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang round with oranges, 
knives, and sealing-wax : whilst the guard is closing the door. 
Where are they now, those sealing-wax venders? where are 
the guards ? where are the jolly teams ? where are the coaches ? 
and where the youth that climbed inside and out of them ; that 
heard the merry horn which sounds no more ; that saw the sun 
rise over Stonehenge ; that rubbed away the bitter tears at night 
after parting as the coach sped on the journey to school and 
London ; that looked out with beating heart as the milestones 
flew by, for the welcome corner where began home and holi- 
days ? 

It is night now : and here is home. Gathered under the 
quiet roof elders and children lie alike at rest. In the midst of 
a great peace and calm, the stars look out from the heavens. 
The silence is peopled with the past ; sorrowful remorses for 
sins and short-comings — memories of passionate joys and griefs 
rise out of their graves, both now ahke cahn and sad. Eyes, 
as I shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased to shine. 
The town and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight, 
wreathed in the autumn mists. Twinkling among the houses 
a light keeps watch here and there, in what may be a sick cham- 
ber or two. The clock tolls sweetly in the silent air. Here is 
night and rest. An awful sense of thanks makes the heart 
swell, and the head bow, as I pass to my room through the 
sleeping house, and feel as though a hushed blessing were 
upon it. 



ON A JOKE I ONCE HEAED FEOM THE LATE 
^ THOMAS HOOD. 

The good-natured reader who has perused some of these 
rambling papers has long since seen (if to see has been worth 
his trouble) that the writer belongs to the old-fashioned classes 
of this world, loves to remember very much more than to 
prophesy, and though he can't help being carried onward, and 
downward, perhaps, on the hill of life, the swift mile-tones 
marking their forties, fifties — how many tens or lustres shall 
we say? — he sits under Time, the white-wigged charioteer, 
with his back to the horses, and his face to the past, looking 
at the receding landscape and the hills fading into the gra^ 



64 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

distance. Ah me ! those gray, distant hills were green once, 
and here, and covered with smiling people ! As we came up 
the hill there was diflicult}', and here and there a hard pull 
to be sure, but strength, and spirits, and all sorts of cheery 
incident and companionship on the road ; there were the tough 
struggles (bjT^ heaven's merciful will) overcome, the pauses, the 
faintings, the weakness, the lost way, perhaps, the bitter 
weather, the dreadful partings, the lonely night, the passionate 
grief — towards these I turn m}^ thoughts as I sit and think in 
m}^ hobb3-coach under Time, the silver-wigged charioteer. The 
young folks in the same carriage meanwhile are looking for- 
wards. Nothing escapes their keen e3'es — not a flower at the 
side of a cottage garden, nor a bunch of rosy-faced children 
at the gate : the landscape is all bright, the air brisk and jolly, 
the town 3^onder looks beautiful, and do you think they have 
learned to be difficult about the dishes at the inn ? 

Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journe}^ with his wife and 
children in the sociable, and he passes an ordinary brick house 
on the road with an ordinar^^ little garden in the front, we will 
ssiy, and quite an ordinary knocker to the door, and as many 
sashed windows as you please, quite common and square, and 
tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others ; or suppose, 
in driving over such and such a common, he sees an ordinary 
tree, and an ordinar}' donkey browsing under it, if you like — 
wife and daughter look at these objects without the slightest 
particle of curiosity or interest. What is a brass knocker to 
them but a lion's head, or what not? and a thorn-tree with 
pool beside it, but a pool in which a thorn and a jackass are 
reflected ? 

But 3^ou remember how once upon a time 3'our heart used to 
beat, as 3'ou beat on that brass knocker, and whose e3''es looked 
from the window above. You remember how by that thorn- tree 
and pool, where the geese were performing a prodigious everipg 
concert, there might be seen, at a certain hour, somebody in a 
certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to be coming from 
a village 3''onder, and whose image has flickered in that pool. 
In that pool, near the thorn? Yes, in that goose-pool, never 
mind how long ago, when there were reflected the images of 
the geese — and two geese more. Here, at least, an oldster 
may have the advantage of his young fellow-travellers, and so 
Putney Heath or the New Road may be invested with a halo 
of brightness invisible to them, because it only beams out of 
his own soul. 

I have been reading the " Memorials of Hood " b3' his chil- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. (lo 

dren,* and wonder whether the book will have the same interest 
for others and for younger people, as for persons of my own 
age and calling. Books of travel to any country become inter- 
esting to us who have been there. Men revisit the old school, 
though hateful to them, with ever so much kindliness and senti- 
mental affection. There was the tree under which the bully 
licked you : here the ground where you had to fag out on holi- 
days, and so forth. In a word, my dear sir, You are the most 
interesting subject to j-ourself, of any that can occup}^ j^our 
worship's thoughts. I have no doubt, a Crimean soldier, read- 
ing a history of that siege, and how Jones and the gallant 99th 
were ordered to charge or what not, thinks, "Ah, yes, we of 
the 100th were placed so and so, I perfectly remember." So 
with this memorial of poor Hood, it may have, no doubt, a 
greater interest for me than for others, for I was fighting, so to 
speak, in a different part of the field, and engaged, a joung 
subaltern, in the Battle of Life, in which Hood fell, young 
still, and covered with glor3\ "The Bridge of Sighs" was 
his Corunna, his Heights of Abraham — sickly, weak, wounded, 
be fell in the full blaze and fame of that great victory. 

What manner of man was the genius who penned that famous 
song? What like was Wolfe, who climbed and conquered on 
those famous Heights of Abraham ? We all want to know de- 
tails regarding men who have achieved famous feats, whether 
of war, or wit, or eloquence, or endurance, or knowledge. His 
one or two happy and heroic actions take a man's name and 
memory out of a crowd of names and memories. Henceforth 
he stands eminent. We scan him : we want to know all about 
him; we walk round and examine him, are curious, perhaps, 
and think are we not as strong and tall and capable as yonder 
champion ; were we not bred as well, and could we not endure 
the winter's cold as well as he ? Or we look up with all our 
eves of admiration ; will find no fault in our hero : declare his 
beauty and proportions perfect ; his critics envious detractors, 
and so forth. Yesterday, before he performed his feat, he was 
nobody. Who cared about his birthplace, his parentage, or 
the color of his hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or 
by a series of great actions to which his genius accustoms us, 
he is famous, and antiquarians are busy finding out under what 
schoolmaster's ferule he was educated, where his grandmother 
was vaccinated, and so forth. If half a dozen washing-bills of 
Goldsmith's were to be found to-morrow, would they not inspire 
a general interest, and be printed in a hundred papers? I 

* Memorials of Thomas Hood. Moxon, 1860. 2 vols. 



66 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

lighted upon Oliver, not very long since, in an old Town and 
Country Magazine, at the Pantheon masquerade "in an old 
English habit." Straightway my imagination ran out to meet 
him, to look at him, to follow him about. I forgot the names of 
scores of fine gentlemen of the past age, who were mentioned 
besides. We want to see this man who has amused and charmed 
us ; who has been our friend, and given us hours of pleasant 
companionship and kindly thought. I protest when I came, in 
the midst of those names of people of fashion, and beaux, and 
demireps, upon those names " Sir J. R-yn-lds^ in a domino ; Mr. 
Gr-d-ck and Dr. G-ldsm-th, in two old English dresses^'' I had, so 
to speak, my heart in my mouth. What, you here, my dear Sir 
Joshua? Ah, what an honor and privilege it is to see you! 
This is Mr. Goldsmith? And very much, sir, the ruff and the 
slashed doublet become you ! O Doctor ! what a pleasure I had 
and have in reading the Animated Nature. How did you learn 
the secret of writing the decasyllabic line, and whence that sweet 
wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song? Was 
Beau Tibbs a real man, and will you do me the honor of allow- 
ing me to sit at your table at supper ? Don't you think you 
know how he would have talked ? Would you not have hked 
to hear him prattle over the champagne ? 

Now, Hood is passed away — passed off the earth as much 
as Goldsmith or Horace. The times in which he lived, and in 
which very many of us lived and were young, are changing or 
changed. I saw Hood once as a 3'oung man, at a dinner which 
seems almost as ghostly now as that masquerade at the Pantheon 
(1772), of which we were speaking anon. It was at a dinner 
of the Literary Fund, in that vast apartment which is hung 
round with the portraits of ver}^ large Royal Freemasons, now 
unsubstantial ghosts. There at the end of the room was Hood. 
Some publishers, I think, were our companions. I quite re- 
member his pale face ; he was thin and deaf, and very silent ; 
he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he made one 
pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood said, — 
(the Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. 
Cuff in those da^^s, not b}^ its present proprietors). Well, the 
box being lost, and asked for, and Cuff (remember that 
name) being the name of the landlord, Hood opened his silent 
jaws and said ***** Shall I tell you what he said? It 
was not a \Q.vy good pun, which the great punster then made. 
Choose your favorite pun out of "Whims and Oddities," and 
fancy that was the joke which he contributed to the hilarity of 
our little table. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 67 

Where those asterisks are drawn on the page, yon must 
know, a pause occurred, during which I was engaged with 
"Hood's Own," having been referred to the book b}- this Hfe 
of the author which I have just been reading. I am not o-oino* 
to dissert on Hood's humor ; I am not a fair judge. Have I 
not said elsewhere that there are one or two wonderfully old 
gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips when I was a 
boy ? I can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of 
that sovereign, that rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my 
young days happ}^ Those old sovereign-contributors may tell 
stories ever so old, and I shall laugh ; they may commit murder, 
and I shall beheve it was justifiable homicide. There is m}^ 
friend Baggs, who goes about abusing me, and of course oui 
dear mutual friends tell me. Abuse away, mon hon! You 
were so kind to me when I wanted kindness, that you ma}" take 
the change out of that gold now, and sa}' I am a cannibal and 
negro, if you will. Ha, Baggs ! Dost thou wince as thou 
readest this line? Does guilty conscience throbbing at thy 
breast tell thee of whom the fable is narrated ? Puff out thy 
wrath, and, when it has ceased to blow, my Baggs shall be to me 
as the Baggs of old — the generous, the gentle, the friendly. 

No, on second thoughts, I am determined I will not repeat 
that joke which I heard Hood make. He says he wrote these 
jokes with such ease that he sent manuscripts to the publishers 
faster than they could acknowledge the receipt thereof. I won't 
sa}" that they were all good jokes, or that to read a great book 
full of them is a work at present altogether jocular. Writing 
to a friend respecting some memoir of him which had been 
published. Hood says, "You will judge how well the author 
knows me, when he says my mind is rather serious than comic," 
At the time when he wrote these words, he evidently under- 
valued his own serious power, and thought that in punning and 
broad-grinning Xskj his chief strength. Is not there something 
touching in that simplicity and humility of faith ? "To make 
laugh is my calling," says he ; "I must jump, I must gi'in, I 
must tumble, I must turn language head over heels, and leap 
through grammar ; " and he goes to his work humbl}^ and 
courageously, and what he has to do that does he with all his 
might, through sickness, through sorrow, through exile, povert}', 
fever, depression — there he is, always ready to his work, and 
with a jewel of genius in his pocket ! Why, when he laid down 
his puns and pranks, put the motley off, and spoke out of his 
heart, all England and America listened with tears and wonder ! 
Other men have delusions of conceit, and fancy themselves 



68 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

greater than they are, and that the world slights them. Have 
we not heard how Liston always thought he ought to play 
Hamlet? Here is a man with a power to touch the heart almost 
unequalled, and he passes days and 3'ears in writing, " Young 
Ben he was a nice 3'oung man," and so forth. To say truth, I 
have been reading in a book of "Hood's Own" until I am 
perfectly angr}^ "You great man, you good man, 3'ou true 
genius and poet," I cr}^ out, as I turn page after page. " Do, 
do, make no more of these jokes, but be 3'ourself, and take your 
station." 

When Hood was on his death-bed, Sir Robert Peel, who only 
knew of his illness, not of his imminent danger, wrote to him 
a noble and touching letter, announcing that a pension was 
conferred on him : 

" I am more than repaid," writes Peel, " by the personal satisfaction 
which I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and char- 
acteristic acknowledgments. 

" You perhaps think that you are known to one with such multifarious 
occupations as myself, merely by general reputation as an author ; but I 
assure you that there can be little, which you have written and acknowl- 
edged, which I have not read ; and that there are few who can appreciate 
and admire more than myself, the good sense and good feeling which have 
taught you to infuse so much fun and merriment into writings correcting 
folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those 
limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very often confined. 
You may write on with the consciousness of independence, as free and un- 
fettered, as if no communication had ever passed between us. I am not 
conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions 
of the legislature, whicli has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain 
sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to the recognition of 
public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the names 
of those whose claims have been admitted on account of their literary or 
scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of my 
statement. 

" One return, indeed, I shall ask of you, — that you will give me the 
opportunity of making your personal acquaintance." 

And Hood, writing to a friend, enclosing a copy of Peel's letter, 
says, " Sir R. Peel came from Burleigh on Tuesday night, and 
went down to Brighton on Saturday. If he had written by 
post, I should not have have it till to-da3^ So he sent his ser- 
vant with the enclosed on Saturday night ; another mark of con- 
siderate attention." He is frightfully unwell, he continues : his 
wife sa3^s he looks quite green ; but ill as he is, poor fellow, 
' ' his well is not dry. He has pumped out a sheet of Christmas 
fun, is drawing some cuts, and shall wiite a sheet more of his 
novel." 



^ 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 69 

Oh, sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient 
endurance, of duty struggling against pain ! How noble Peel's 
figure is standing by that sick-bed ! how generous his words 
how dignified and sincere his compassion ! And the poor djdng 
man, with a heart full of natural gratitude towards his noble 
benefactor, must turn to him and say — "If it be well to be 
remembered by a Minister, it is better still not to be forgotten 
by him in a ' hurly Burleigh ! ' " Can you laugh ? Is not the 
joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips? As dying 
Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his bow — as one reads 
of Catholics on their death-beds putting on a Capuchin dress to 
go out of the world — here is poor Hood at his last hour putting 
on his ghastly motley, and uttering one joke more. 

He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his chil- 
dren, wife, friends ; to the former especially his whole life had 
been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, 
and affection. In going through the record of his most pure, 
modest, honorable life, and living along with him, you come to 
trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loj^al, affec- 
tionate, and upright sojil, with whom you have been brought 
into communion. Can we say as much of the lives of all men 
of letters? Here is one at least without guile, without pre- 
tension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and 
little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted. 

And what a hard work, and what a slender reward ! In the 
little domestic details with which the book abounds, what a 
simple life is shown to us ! The most^ simple little pleasures 
and amusements delight and occupy him. You have revels on 
shrimns ; the good wife making the pie ; details about the maid, 
and criticisms on her conduct ; wonderful tricks played with the 
plum-pudding — all the pleasures centring round the little humble 
home. One of the first men of his time, he is appointed editoi- 
of a Magazine at a salary of 300^. per annum, signs himself 
exultingly "Ed. N. M. M.," and the family rejoice over the 
income as over a fortune. He goes to a Greenwich dinner — 
what a feast and a rejoicing afterwards ! — 

" Well, we drank ' the Boz ' with a delectable clatter, which drew from 
him a good warm-hearted speech. ... He looked very well, and had a 
younger brother along with him. . . . Then we had songs. Barham chanted 
a Robin Hood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord 
H ; and somebody, unknown to me, gave a capital imitation of a 
French showman. Then we toasted Mrs. Boz, ana the Chairman, and 
Vice, and the Traditional Priest sang the ' Deep deep sea,' in his deep deep 
voice ; and then we drank to Procter, who wrote the said song ; also Sir J. 
Wilson's good health, and Cruikshank's, and Ainsworth's : and a Man- 



70 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Chester friend of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, so full of trading stuff, 
that it really seemed to have been not composed, but manufactured. Jer- 
dan, as Jerdanish as usual on such occasions — you know how paradoxi- 
cally he is quite at home in dining oat. As to myself, I had to make my 
second maiden speech, for Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms 
my modesty might allow me to repeat to you, but my memory won't. 
However, I ascribed the toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured 
them that their wishes had already improved it — that I felt a brisker 
circulation — a more genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a 
certain trembling of my hand was not from palsy, or my old ague, but an 
inclination in my hand to sliake itself with every one present. Whereupon 
I had to go tlirough the friendly ceremony with as many of the company 
as were within reach, besides a few more who came express from the otlier 
end of the table. Ve7-y gratifying, wasn't it ? Though I cannot go quite 
so far as Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and 
preserved in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual 
when I go out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the 
door before I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kin'dly sent me in his 
own carriage. Poor girl ! what would she do if she had a wild husband 
instead of a tame one 1 " 

And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and fondles the 
hand which has been shaken by so man}- illustrious men ! The 
little feast dates back only eighteen 3^©ars, and yet somehow it 
seems as distant as a dinner at Mr. Thrale's, or a meeting at 

wni's. 

Poor littl6 gleam of sunshine ! very little good cheer enlivens 
that sad simple life. We have the triumph of the Magazine : 
then a new Magazine projected and produced : then illness and 
the last scene, and the kind Peel by the d3ing man's bedside 
speaking noble words of respect and sj^mpathj^, and soothing 
the last throbs of the tender honest heart. 

I like, I say, Hood's life even better than his books, and I 
wish, with all my heart, Monsieur et cher confrere^ the same 
could be said for both of us, when the inkstream of our life 
hath ceased to run. Yes : if I drop first, dear Baggs, I trust 
you may find reason to modify some of the unfavorable views 
of my character, which you are freely imparting to our mutual 
friends. What ought to be the literary man's point of honor 
now-a-days? Suppose, friendly reader, 3'ou are one of the 
craft, what legacy would you like to leave to your children? 
First of all (and by heaven's gracious help) you would pray 
and strive to give them such an endowment of love, as should 
last certainly for all their lives, and perhaps be transmitted to 
their children. You would (by the same aid and blessing) 
keep your honor pure, and transmit a name unstained to those 
who have a right to bear it. You would, — though this faculty 
of giving is one of the easiest of the literary man's qualities — 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 71 

you would, nut of 3'our earnings, small or great, be able to help 
a poor brother in need, to dress his wounds, and, if it were but 
twopence, to give him succor. Is the money which the noble 
Macaulay gave to the poor lost to his family? God forbid. 
To the loving hearts of his kindred is it not rather the most 
precious part of their inheritance ? It was invested in love and 
righteous doing, and it bears interest in heaven. You will, if 
letters be your vocation, find saving harder than giving and 
spending. To save be 3^our endeavor, too, against the night's 
coming when no man may work ; when the arm is weary with 
the long day's labor; when the brain perhaps grows dark; 
when the old, who can labor no more, want warmth and rest, 
and the young ones call for supper. 



I copied the little galley-slave who is made to figure in the 
initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which 
^e purchased in a curiosity-shop at the Hague.* It is one of 
the gift spoons so common in Holland, and which have multi- 
plied so astonishingly of late j^ears at our dealers' in old silver- 
ware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words : 
*' Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen " — "In the j^ear 
1609 I went thus clad." The good Dutchman was released 
from his Algerine captivity (I imagine his figure looks like that 
of a slave amongst the Moors), and in his thank-offering to 
some godchild at home, he thus piously records his escape. 

Was not poor Cervantes also a captive amongst the Moors? 
Did not Fielding, and Goldsmith, and Smollett, too, die at the 
chain as well as poor Hood ? Think of Fielding going on board 
his wretched ship in the Thames, with scarce a hand to bid him 
farewell ; of brave Tobias Smollett, and his life, how hard, and 
how poorly rewarded ; of Goldsmith, and the physician whis- 
pering,," Have 3^ou something on your mind?^' and the wild 
dying eyes answering, "Yes." Notice how Boswell speaks of 
Goldsmith, and the splendid contempt with which he regards 
him. Read Hawkins on Fielding, and the scorn with which 
Dandy Walpole and Bishop Hurd speak of him. Galley-slaves 
doomed to tug the oar and wear the chain, whilst my lords and 
dandies take their pleasure, and hear fine music and disport 
with fine ladies in the cabin ! 

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work. 



72 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

But stay. Was there any cause for this scorn ? Had some 
of these great men weaknesses which gave inferiors advantage 
over them? Men of letters cannot la}- their hands on their 
hearts, and say, " No, the fault was fortune's, and the indiffer- 
ent world's, not Goldsmith's nor Fielding's." There was no 
reason wh}' Oliver should always be thriftless ; wh}^ Fielding 
and Steele should sponge upon their friends ; why Sterne should 
make love to his neighbors' wives. Swift, for a long time, was 
as poor as any wag that ever laughed : but he owed no penny 
to his neighbors : Addison, when he wore his most threadbare 
coat, could hold his head up, and maintain his dignity : and, I 
dare vouch, neither of those gentlemen, when they were ever so 
poor, asked any man alive to pity their condition, and have a 
regard to the weaknesses incidental to the literary profession. 
Galle}'- slave, forsooth ! If you are sent to prison for some error 
for which the law awards that sort of laborious seclusion, so 
much the more shame for you. If 3^ou are chained to the oar 
a prisoner of war, like Cervantes, you have the pain, but not 
the shame, and the friendty compassion of luankind to reward 
3^ou. Gallej^-slaves, indeed ! What man has not his oar to 
pull? There is that wonderful old stroke-oar in the Queen's 
gaUe}^ How many years has he pulled? Da}" and night, in 
rough water or smooth, with what invincible vigor and sur- 
prising ga3'ety he plies his arms. There is in the same Galere 
Capitaine^ that well-known, trim figure, the bow-oar ; how he 
tugs, and with what a will ! How both of them have been 
abused in their time ! Take the Lawyer's gallej', and that 
dauntless octogenarian in command ; when has he ever com- 
plained or repined about his slavery? There is the Priest's 
galley — black and lawn sails — do an}" mariners out of Thames 
work harder? When lawyer, and statesman, and divine, and 
writer are snug in bed, there is a ring at the poor Doctor's bell. 
Forth he must go, in rheumatism or snow ; a galley-slave bear^ 
ing his galley-pots to quench the flames of fever, to succor 
mothers and young children in their hour of peril, and, as gently 
and soothingly as may be, to carry the hopeless patient pver to 
the silent shore. And have we not just read of the actions 
of the Queen's galleys and their brave crews in the Chinese 
waters? Men not more worthy of human renown and honor 
to-day in their ^dctory, than last year in their glorious hour of 
disaster. So with stout hearts may we ply the oar, messmates 
all, till the voyage is over, and the Harbor of Rest is found. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 73 



BOUND ABOUT THE CHEISTMAS TREE. 

The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust ever}^ gentle 
reader has pulled a bonbon or two, is 3^et all aflame whilst I am 
writing, and sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season. You 
young ladies, may you have plucked pretty giftlings from it ; 
and out of the cracker sugarplum which you have spHt with the 
captain or the sweet young curate may you have read one of 
those delicious conundrums which the confectioners introduce 
into the sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion 
of love. Those riddles are to be read at your age, when I dare 
say they are amusing. As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are 
standing at the tree, the}^ don't care about the love-riddle part, 
but understand the sweet-almond portion very well. They are 
four, five, six years old. Patience, little people ! A dozen 
merry Christmases more, and 3^ou will be reading those wonder- 
ful love-conundrums, too. As for us elderly folks, we watch 
the babies at their sport, and the 3^oung people pulling at the 
branches : and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties in the 
packets which we pluck off the boughs, we find enclosed Mr. 
Carnifex's review of the quarter's meat ; Mr. Sartor's compli- 
ments, and little statement for self and the young gentlemen ; 
and Madame de Sainte-Crinoline's respects to the young ladies, 
who encloses her account, and will send on Saturday, please ; 
or we stretch our hand out to the educational branch of the 
Christmas tree, and there find a livelj^ and amusing article from 
the Rev. Henry Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's ex- 
ceedingly moderate account for the last term's school expenses. 

The tree yet sparkles, I sa}^ I am writing on the daj^ before 
Twelfth Day, if you must know ; but alread}^ ever so man}'^ of 
the fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone 
out. Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with us for a 
week (and who has been sleeping mj^steriously in the bath- 
room) , comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of the 
holidays with his grandmother — and I brush awa}' the manly 
tear of regret as I part with the dear child. "Well, Bob, 
good-by, since j^ou will go. Compliments to grandmamma. 
Thaiik her for the turkey. Here's — " {A slight pecuniary 
transection takes place at this juncture^ and Bob nods and winks^ 
and ptkts his hand in his waistcoat pocket.) '* You have had a 
pleasant week?" 



74 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Bob. — "Haven't I!" (A?id exit^ anxious to know the 
amount of the coin which has just changed hands. ^ 

He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door 
(behind which I see him perfectl3'), I too cast up a little ac- 
count of our past Christinas week. AVhen Bob's holidaj's are 
over, and the printer has sent me back this manuscript, I know 
Christmas will be an old story. All the fruit will be off the 
Christmas tree then ; the crackers will have cracked off ; the 
almonds will have been crunched ; and the sweet-bitter riddles 
will have been read ; the lights will have perished off the dark 
green boughs ; the toys growing on them will have been dis- 
tributed, fought for, cherished, neglected, broken. Ferdinand 
and Fidelia will each keep out of it (be still, my gushing heart !) 
the remembrance of a riddle read together, of a double-almond 
munched together, and the moiety of an exploded cracker. 
. . . The maids, I say, will have taken down all that holly 
stuff and nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and looking-glasses, 
the dear boys will be back at school, fondly thinking of the 
pantomime-fairies whom they have seen ; whose gaud}^ gossa- • 
mer wings are battered by this time ; and whose pink cotton 
(or silk is it?) lower extremities are all dingy and dusty. Yet 
but a few days. Bob, and flakes of paint will have cracked off 
the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of adaman- 
tine lustre will be as shabby as the cit}^ of Pekin. When 3'on 
read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue out 
of his mouth, and saying, "How are j^ou to-morrow?" To- 
morrow, indeed ! He must be almost ashamed of himself (if 
that cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the 
absurd question. To-morrow, indeed ! To-morrow the diffu- 
gient snows will give place to Spring ; the snowdrops will Hft 
their heads ; Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniar}^ 
duties peculiar to that feast ; in place of bonbons, trees will 
have an eruption of light green knobs ; the whitebait season 
will bloom ... as if one need go on describing these vernal 
phenomena, when Christmas is still here, though ending, and 
the subject of m}^ discourse ! 

We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how 
boisteroush^ joH}" ^^^3' become at Christmas time. What was- 
sail-bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of 
Christmas song ! And then to think that these festivities Jire 
'pf epared months before — that these Christmas pieces are pro- 
phetic ! How kind of artists and poets to devise tUe festii^ities 
beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper tim& ! We ought 
to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at nidnight 



/ 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 75 

and sets the pudding a-boiling, which is to feast us at six 
o'clock. I often think with gratitude of the famous Mr. Nelson 
Lee — the author of I don't know how many hundred glorious 
pantomimes — walking by the summer wave at Margate, or 
Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea of some new 
'•gorgeous spectacle of faer}', which the winter shall see complete. 
He is like cook at midnight (si parva licet) . -He watches and 
thinks. He pounds the sparlding sugar of benevolence, the 
plums of fanc}^ the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of — well, the 
figs of fairy fiction, let us sa}^, and pops the whole in the seeth- 
ing caldron of imagination, and at due season serves up the 
Pantomime. 

Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see all 
the pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of m}- hfe 
I shall never forego reading about them in that delicious sheet 
of The Times which appears on the morning after Boxing-day. 
Perhaps reading is even better than seeing. The best wa}^ I 
think, is to say you are ill, lie in bed, and have the paper for 
two hours, reading all the wa/down from Drurj^ Lane to the 
Britannia at Hoxton. Bob and I went to two pantomimes. 
One was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy 
Opera, and I don't know which we liked the best. 

At the Fancy, we saw ' ' Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's 
Ghost and Nunk3^'s Pison," which is all very well — but, gen- 
tlemen, if you don't respect Shakspeare, to whom will you be 
civil? The palace and ramparts of Elsinore b3' moon and 
snowlight is one of Loutherbourg's finest efforts. The ban- 
queting hall of the palace is illuminated : the peaks and gables 
•glitter with the snow : the sentinels march blowing their fingers 
with the cold — the freezing of the nose of one of them is very 
neatty and dexterously arranged : the snow-storm rises : the 
winds howl awfully along the battlements : the waves come 
curling, leaping, foaming to shore. Hamlet's umbrella is 
whirled away in the storm. He and his two friends stamp on 
each other's toes to keep them warm. The storm-spirits rise 
in the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the 
rocks. My ej^es ! what tiles and chimnej'-pots fly hurtling 
through the air ! As the storm reaches its height (here the 
wind instruments come in with prodigious eff'ect, and I compli- 
ment Ml Brumby and the violoncellos) — as the snow-storm 
rises, (quetk, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then thrumpt}^ 
thrump con/^s a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which 
sends a shivci into your ver}^ boot-soles,) the thunder-clouds 
deepen (bong, V)ng, bong, from the violoncellos). The forked 



76 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

lightning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream of vio- 
lins — and look, look, look ! as the frothing, roaring waves come 
rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling parapet, each 
hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-carriages rolling 
over the platform, and plunges howling into the water again. 

Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look for 
her son. The storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and 
she retires screaming in pattens. 

The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore 
are seen to drive off, and several people are drowned. The 
gas-lamps along the street are wrenched from their founda- 
tions, and shoot through the troubled air. Whist, rush, hish ! 
how the rain roars and pours ! The darkness becomes awful, 
alwa3^s deepened by the power of the music — and see — in the 
midst of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air and 
wave — what is that ghastly figure moving hither ? It becomes 
bigger, bigger, as it advances down the platform — more 
ghastl}^, more horrible, enormous ! It is as tall as the whole 
stage. It seems to be advancing on the stalls and pit, and the 
whole house screams with terror, as the Ghost op the late 
Hamlet comes in, and begins to speak. Several people faint, 
and the light-fingered gentr}^ pick pockets furiously in the 
darkness. 

In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes 
about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the 
wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest 
spectator must have felt frightened. But hark ! what is that 
silver shimmer of the fiddles ! Is it — can it be — the gray 
dawn peeping in the stormy east? The ghost's ejes look 
blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly agon}^ Quicker, quicker 
ply the violins of Phoebus Apollo. Redder, redder grow the 
orient clouds, Cockadoodledoo ! crows that gi-eat cock which 
has just come out on the roof of the palace. And now the 
round sun himself pops up from behind the waves of night. 
Where is the ghost ? He is gone ! Purple shadows of morn 
"slant o'er the snow}^ sward," the city wakes up in life and 
sunshine, and we confess we are ver}'^ much relieved at the dis- 
appearance of the ghost. We don't like those dark scenes in 
pantomimes. * 

After the usual business, that Ophelia should be tu^rned into 
Columbine was to be expected ; but I confess I ^as a little 
shocked when Hamlet's mother became Pantaloon, and was 
instantly knocked down by Clown Claudius. Gfimaldi is get- 
ting a Mttle old now, but for real humor therf are few clown* 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 77 

like him. Mr. Shuter, as the grave-digger, was chaste and 
comic, as he always is, and the scene-painters surpassed them- 
selves. 

"Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings," at the 
other house, is very pleasant too. The irascible William is 
acted with great vigor by Snoxall, and the battle of Hastino-s 
is a good piece of burlesque. Some trifling liberties are taken 
with history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of 
pantomime permit himself? At the battle of Hastings, Wil- 
liam is on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, 
very elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco 
Sharpshooter), when a shot from the Normans kills Harold. 
The fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds his body, 
which straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst the Con- 
queror makes an excellent clown, and the Archbishop of 
Bayeux a diverting pantaloon, &c. &c. &c. 

Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw ; but 
one description will do as well as another. The plots, you see, 
are a little intricate and difficult to understand in pantomimes ; 
and I may have mixed up one with another. That I was at 
the theatre on Boxing- night is certain — but the pit was so full 
that I could onty see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I 
stood at the door. And if I was badly off", I think there was a 
young gentleman behind me worse off still. I own that he has 
good reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind 
my back, and hereby beg his pardon. 

Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Picca- 
dilly, who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on 
his back, uttering energetic expressions ; that party begs to offer 
thanks, and compliments of the season. 

Bob's behavior on New Year's day, I can assure Dr. Holy- 
shade, was highly creditable to the boy. He had expressed a 
determination to partake of ever}' dish which was put on the 
table ; but after soup, fish, roast-beef, and roast-goose, he re- 
tired from active business until the pudding and mince-pies 
made their appearance, 'of which he partook liberally, but not 
too freely. And he greatly advanced in my good opinion by 
praising the punch, which was of my own manufacture, and 
which some gentlemen present (Mr. CM — g — n, amongst 
others) pronounced to be too weak. Too weak ! A bottle of 
rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a bottle of brandy, and two bot- 
tles and a half of water — can this mixture be said to be too 
weak for any mortal ? Our young friend amused the company 
during the evening by exhibiting a two-shilling magic-lantern, 



78 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

which he had purchased, and likewise by singing " Sally, come 
up ! " a quaint, but rather monotonous melody, which I am told 
is sung by the poor negro on the banks of the broad Missis- 
sippi. 

What other enjo3-ments did we proffer for the child's amuse- 
ment during the Christmas week? A great philosopher was 
giving a lecture to young folks at the British Institution. But 
when this diversion was proposed to our 3'oung friend Bob, he 
said, "Lecture? No, thank 30U. Not as I knows on," and 
made sarcastic signals on his nose. Perhaps he^is of Dr. John- J| 
son's opinion about lectures : " Lectures, sir ! what man would 
go to hear that imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at 
leisure in a book?" /never went, of my own choice, to a lec- 
ture ; that I can vow. As for sermons, they are different; I 
delight in them, and they cannot, of course, be too long. 

Well, we partook of 3'et other Christmas delights besides 
pantomime, pudding, and pie. One glorious, one delightful, 
one most unlucky and pleasant da3', we drove in a brougham, 
with a famous horse, which carried us more quickl3* and briskly 
than any of 3'our vulgar railwa3^s, over Battersea Bridge, on 
which the horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron ; through 
suburban villages, plum-caked with snow ; under a leaden sk3^, 
in which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan ; b3" pond 
after pond, where not onl3^ men and bo3^s, but scores after 
scores of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clap- 
ping their lean old sides with laughter, as the3^ tumbled down, 
and their hobnailed shoes flew up in the air ; the air frost3^ with 
a lilac haze, through which villas, and commons, and churches, 
and plantations glimmered. We drive up the hill. Bob and I ; 
we make the last two miles in eleven minutes ; we pass that 
poor, armless man who sits there in the cold, following 3'ou with 
his e3'es. I don't give anything, and Bob looks disappointed. 
We are set down neatl3^ at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the 
brougham door. I don't give an3^thing ; again disappointment 
on Bob's part. I pay a shilling apiece, and we enter into the 
glorious building, which is decorated for Christmas, and straight- 
way forgetfulness on Bob's part of everything but that magnifi- 
cent scene. The enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and 
Christmas. The stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts, 
statues, splendors, are all crowned for Christmas. The de- 
Ucious negi'o is singing his Alabama choruses for Christmas 
and Bob. He has scarcely done, when, Tootarootatoo ! Mr. 
Punch is performing his surprising actions, and hanging the 
beadle. The stalls are decorated. The refreshment- tables are 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 79 

piled with good things ; at many fountains " Mulled Claret" 

is written up in appetizing capitals. "Mulled Claret oh, 

jolly! How cold it is!" says Bob; I pass on. "It's only 
thi-ee o'clock," says Bob. "No, only three," I say, meekly. 
"We dine at seven," sighs Bob, " and it's so-o-o coo-old." I 
still would take no hints. No claret, no refreshment, no sand- 
wiches, no sausage-rolls for Bob. At last I am obliged to tell 
him all. Just before we left home, a little Christmas bill 
popped in at the door and emptied my purse at the threshold. 
I forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half a 
crown from John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the 
palace of delight. N^ow you see. Bob, why I could not treat 
you on that second of January when we drove to the palace 
together ; when the girls and boys were sliding on the ponds at 
Dulwich ; when the darkling river was full of floating ice, and 
the sun was like a warming-pan in the leaden sky. 

One more Christmas sight we had, of course ; and that sight 
I think I like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all 
seasons. We went to a certain garden of delight, where, what- 
ever your ^ares are, I think you can manage to forget some of 
them, and muse, and be not unhappy ; to a garden beginning 
with a Z, which is as lively as Noah's ark ; where the fox has 
brought his brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the 
elephant has brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought 
his bag, and the condor his old white wig and black satin hood. 
On this day it was so cold that the white bears winked their pink 
eyes, as the3^ plapped up and down b}" their pool, and seemed to 
say, " Aha, this weather reminds us of our dear home ! " " Cold I 
bah ! I have got such a warm coat," says brother Bruin, " I don't 
mind ; " and he laughs on his pole, and clucks down a bun. The 
squealing hysenas gnashed their teeth and laughed at us quite 
refreshingly at their window ; and, cold as it was, Tiger, Tiger, 
burning bright, glared at us red-hot through his bars, and 
snorted blasts of hell. The woolly camel leered at us quite 
kindly as he paced round his ring on his silent pads. We went 
to our favorite places. Our dear wambat came up, and had 
himself scratched very affably. Our fellow-creatures in the 
monkey-room held out their little black hands, and piteously 
asked us for Christmas alms. Those darling alUgators on their 
rock winked at us in the most friendly way. The solemn eagles 
sat alone, and scowled at us from their peaks ; whilst Uttle Tom 
Ratel tumbled over head and heels for us in his usual diverting 
manner. If I have cares in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and 
fancy they don't pass the gate. I recognize my friends, my 



80 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

enemies, in countless cages. I entertained the eagle, the vul- 
ture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated, crimson-necked, 
blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou stork yesterday 
at dinner ; and when Bob's aunt came to tea in the evening, 
and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her gravely, 
and said — 

"First I saw the wliite bear, then T saw the black, 
Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back. 

CMLdren \ ^^^^^^ ^ ^^^ *^^^ camel with a hump upon liis back ! 

Then I saw the gray wolf, with mutton in his maw ; 
Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw ; 
Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk. 
Then I saw the monkeys — mercy, how unpleasantly 
they — smelt ! " 

There. No one can beat that piece of wit, can he. Bob? And 
so it is all over ; but we had a jolly time, whilst 3'ou were with 
us, hadn't we ? Present my respects to the doctor ; and I hope, 
^7 boy, we may spend another merry Christmas next year. 



ON A CHALK-MAEK ON THE DOOR 

On the doorpost of the house of a friend of mine, a few 
inches above the lock, is a little chalk-mark which some sport- 
ive boy in passing has probably scratched on the pillar. The 
door-steps, the lock, handle, and so forth, are kept decently- 
enough ; but this chalk-mark, I suppose some three inches out 
of the housemaid's beat, has already- been on the door for more 
than a fortnight, and I wonder whether it will be there whilst 
this paper is being written, whilst it is at the printer's, and, in 
fine, until the month passes OA^er? I wonder whether the ser- 
vants in that house will read these remarks about the chalk- 
mark? That the CornhiU Magazine is taken in in that house I 
know. In fact I have seen it there. In fact I have read it 
there. In fact I have written it there. In a word, the house 
to which I allude is mine — the " editor's private residence," 
to which, in spite of prayers, entreaties, commands, and 
threats, authors, and ladies especially, will send their com- 
munications, although the}^ won't understand that the}' injure 
their own interests by so doing ; for how is a man who has his 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 81 

own work to do, his own exquisite inventions to form and per- 
fect — Maria to rescue from the unprincipled Earl — the atro- 
cious General to confound in his own machinations — the an- 
gelic Dean to promote to a bishopric, and so forth — how is a 
man to do all this, under a hundred interruptions, and keep 
his nerves and temper in that just and equable state in which 
they ought to be when he comes to assume the critical office ? 
As you will send here, ladies, I must tell 3'ou 3'ou have a 
much worse chance than if you forward your valuable articles 
to Cornhill. Here your papers arrive, at dinner-time, we 
will say. Do j'^ou suppose that is a pleasant period, and that 
we are to criticise you between the ovum and malum ^ between 
the soup and the dessert? I have touched, I think, on this 
subject before. I saj^ again, if you want real justice shown 
you, don't send your papers to the private residence. At 
home, for instance, yesterda3% having given strict orders that 
I was to receive nobod}', "except on business," do 3^ou sup- 
pose a smiling 3^oung Scottish gentleman, who forced himself 
into m3' stud3^, and there announced himself as agent of a 
Cattle-food Compan3^, was received with pleasure? There, as 
I sat in m3^ arm-chair, suppose he had proposed to draw a 
couple of m3^ teeth, would I have been pleased? I could have 
throttled that agent. I dare say the whole of that da3^'s work 
will be found tinged with a ferocious misanthropy, occasioned 
b3' my clever young friend's intrusion. Cattle-food, indeed ! 
As if beans, oats, warm mashes, and a ball, are to be pushed 
down a man's throat just as he is meditating on the great 
social problem, or (for I think it was my epic I was going to 
touch up) just as he was about to soar to the height of the 
empyrean ! 

Having got my cattle-agent out of the door, I resume my 
consideration of that little mark on the doorpost, which is 
scored up as the text of the present little sermon ; and which 
I hope will relate, not to chalk, nor to any of its special uses 
or abuses (such as milk, neck-powder, and the like) , but to 
servants. Surel3" ours might remove that unseemly little mark. 
Suppose it were on m3^ coat, might I not request its removal ? 
I remember, when I was at school, a little careless boy, upon 
whose forehead an ink-mark remained, and was perfectly rec- 
ognizable for three weeks after its first appearance. May I 
take any notice of this chalk-stain on the forehead of my 
house? Whose business is it to wash that forehead? and 
ought I to fetch a brush and a little hot water, and wash it off 

myself? 

6 



S2 ROUNDABOUl: PAPERS. 

Yes. But that spot removed, wh}^ not come down at six, 
and wash the doorsteps? I dare sa}' the early rising and 
exercise would do me a great deal of good. The housemaid, in 
that case, might lie in bed a little later, and have her tea and 
the morning paper brought to her in bed : then, of course, 
Thomas would expect to be helped about the boots and knives ; 
cook about the saucepans, dishes, and what not ; the lad3''s- 
maid would want somebod}^ to take the curl-papers out of her 
hair, and get her bath read3^ You should have a set of ser- 
vants for the servants, and these under servants should have 
slaves to wait on them. The king commands the first lord in 
waiting to desire the second lord to intimate to the gentle- 
man usher to request the page of the ante-chamber to entreat 
the groom of the stairs to implore John to ask the captain 
of the buttons to desire the maid of the still-room to beg the 
housekeeper to give out a few more lumps of sugar, as his 
Majest}' has none for his coffee, which probabl}^ is getting cold 
during the negotiation. In our little Brentfords we are all 
kings, more or less. There are orders, gradations, hierar-jj 
chies, ever3^where. In j'our house and mine there are mys- 
teries unknown to us. I am not going in to the horrid old 
question of "followers." I don't mean cousins from the 
country, love-stricken policemen, or gentlemen in mufti from 
Knightsbridge Barracks ; but people who have an occult right 
on the premises ; the uncovenanted servants of the house ; 
gray women wlio are seen at evening with baskets flitting about 
area-railings ; ding}^ shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in 
your neighborhood ; demure little Jacks, who start up from 
behind boxes in the pantry. Those outsiders wear Thomas's 
crest and Hver}^, and call him ' ' Sir ; " those silent women 
address the female servants as " Mum," and curtsy before 
them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons. 
Then, again, those servi servorum have dependants in the vast, 
silent, poverty-stricken world outside your comfortable kitchen 
fire, in the world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, 
and dank, flagged cellars, and huddled straw, and rags, in 
which pale children are swarming. It may be your beer 
(which runs with great volubility) has a pipe or two which com- 
municates with those dark caverns where hopeless anguish pours 
the groan, and would scarce see light but for a scrap or two of 
candle which has been whipped awa}'- from 3'our worship's 
kitchen. Not man}?- years ago — I don't know whether before 
or since that white mark was drawn on the door — a lad}^ occu- 
pied the confidential place of housemaid in this ' ' private resi- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 83 

dence," who brought a good character, who seemed to have a 
cheerful temper, whom I used to hear clattering and bumping 
overhead or on the stairs long before dajUght — there, I say, 
was poor Camilla, scouring the plain, trundling and brushing^ 
and clattering with her pans and brooms, and humming at her 
work. Well, she had established a smuggling communication 
of beer over the area frontier. This neat-handed PhylUs used 
to pack up the nicest baskets of m}^ provender, and convey 
them to somebody outside — I believe, on my conscience, to 
some poor friend in distress. Camilla was consigned to her 
doom. She was sent back to her friends in the country ; and 
when she was gone we heard of many of her faults. She ex- 
pressed herself, when displeased, in language that I shall not 
repeat. As for the beer and meat, there was no mistake about 
them. But apres? Can I have the heart to be very angry 
with that poor jade for helping another poorer jade out of my 
larder? On your honor and conscience, when you were a boy, 
and the apples looked temptingly over Farmer Quarringdon's 
hedge, did you never — ? When there was a grand dinner 
at home, and you were shding, with Master Bacon, up and 
down the stairs, and the dishes came out, did you ever do 
such a thing as just to — ? Well, in many and many a re- 
spect servants are like children. They are under domination. 
They are subject to reproof, to ill temper, to petty exactions 
and stupid tyrannies not seldom. They scheme, conspire, 
fawn, and are hypocrites. "Little boys should not loll on 
chairs." "Little girls should be seen, and not heard;" and 
so forth. Have we not almost all learnt these expressions 
of old foozles : and uttered them ourselves when in the square- 
toed state? The Eton master, who was breaking a lance with 
our Paterfamilias of late, turned on Paterfamilias, saying. He 
knows not the nature and exquisite candor of well-bred Eng- 
lish boys. Exquisite fiddlestick's end, Mr. Master ! Do you 
mean for to go for to tell us that the relations between young 
gentlemen and their schoolmasters are entirely frank and cor- 
dial ; that the lad is familiar with the man who can have him 
flogged ; never shirks his exercise ; never gets other boys to 
do his verses ; never does other boys' verses ; never breaks 
bounds ; never tells fibs — I mean the fibs permitted by scho- 
lastic honor ? Did I know of a boy who pretended to such a 
character, I would forbid my scapegraces to keep company 
with him. Did I know a schoolmaster who pretended to believe 
in the existence of many hundred such boys in one school at 
one time, I would set that man down as a baby in knowledge 



84 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

of the world. "Who was making that noise?" "I don^ 
know, sir." — And he knows it was the boy next him in school. 
" Who was climbing over that wall? " "I don't know, sir." — 
And it is in the speaker's own trousers, very likely, the glass 
bottle-tops have left their cruel scars. And so with servants. 
" Who ate up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon- 
pie at breakfast this morning? " " O dear me ! sir, it was John, 
who went awa}^ last month ! " — or, ' ' I think it was Miss Mary's 
canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and is so fond of pig- 
eons, it never can have enough of them." Yes, it was the 
canar^'-bird ; and Eliza saw it ; and Eliza is read}^ to vow she 
did. These statements are not true ; but please don't call them 
lies. This is not lying ; this is voting with your party. You 
must back your own side. The servants' -hall stands by the 
servants' -hall against the dining-room. The schoolboys don't 
tell tales of each other. They agree not to choose to know who 
has made the noise, who has broken the window, who has eaten 
up the pigeons, who has picked all the plovers'-eggs out of the 
aspic, how it is that liqueur brand}' of Gledstane's is in such 
porous glass bottles — and so forth. Suppose Brutus had a foot- 
man, who came and told him that the butler drank the Cura9oa, 
which of these servants would you dismiss ? — the butler, per- 
haps, but the footman certainly. 

No. If your plate and glass are beautifull}- bright, j'our 
bell quickl}^ answered, and Thomas read}', neat, and good- 
humored, you are not to expect absolute truth from him. The 
very obsequiousness and perfection of his service prevents 
truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or bod}^, and he 
must go through his service — hand the shining plate, replenish 
the spotless glass, la}^ the ghttering fork — never laugh when 
you yourself or 3'our guests joke — be profoundly attentive, 
and yet look utterly impassive — exchange a few hurried curses 
at the door with that unseen slave}' who ministers without, and 
with 3'ou be perfectly calm and polite. If you are ill, he will 
come twenty times in an hour to your bell ; or leave the girl of 
his heart — his mother, who is going to America — his dearest 
friend, who has come to say farewell — his lunch, and his glass 
of beer just freshly poured out — an}^ or all of these, if the 
door-bell rings, or the master calls out "Thomas" from the 
hall. Do you suppose 3"ou can expect absolute candor from a 
man whom 3'ou ma}' order to powder his hair? As between 
the Rev. Henry Holj'shade and his pupil, the idea of entire 
unreserve is utter bosh ; so the truth as between 3'OU and 
Jeaijies or Thomas, or Mary the housemaid, or Betty the cook, 



d 



11 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 85 

is relative, and not to be demanded on one side or the other. 
Why, respectful civility is itself a lie, which poor Jeames ofteii 
has to utter or perform to many a swaggering vulgarian, who 
should black Jeames's boots, did Jeames wear them and not 
shoes. There is your little Tom, just ten, ordering the great, 
large, quiet, orderly young man about — shrieking calls for hot 
water — bullying Jeames because the boots are not varnished 
enough, or ordering him to go- to the stables, and ask Jenkins 

why the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought his pony round or 

what }• ou will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot 
the lady's-maid, and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up 
five pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, 
mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, 
from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing service. My dear, 
^ood people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask for 
y'our newspaper, and Jeames says, " Pm reading it, and jest 
beg not to be disturbed ; " or suppose you ask for a can of 
water, and he remarks, "You great, big, 'ulking fellar, ain't 
you big enough to bring it hup j^oursulf?" what would your 
feelings be ? Now, if you made similar proposals or requests 
bo Mr. Jones next door, this ig- the kind of answer Jones would 
^ive you. You get truth habituallj' from equals onl}^ ; so my 
^ood Mr. Holyshade, don't talk to me about the habitual candor 
3f the young Etonian of high birth, or I have my own opinion 
5f yowr candor or discernment when you do. No. Tom Bow- 
ling is the soul of honor and has been true to Black-eyed 
Syousan since the last time they parted at Wapping Old Stairs ; 
but do you suppose Tom is perfectly frank, familiar, and above- 
board in his conversation with Admiral Nelson, K.C.B. ? There 
ire secrets, prevarications, fibs, if you will, between Tom and 
:he Admiral — between your crew and their captain. I know 
[ hire a worthy, clean, agreeable, and conscientious male or 
female hj^pocrite, at so many guineas a year, to do so and so 
for me. Were he other than hj pocrite I would send him about 
lis business. Don't let mj' displeasure be too fierce with him 
'or a fib or two on his own account. 

Some dozen years ago, loay famil}' being absent in a distant 
3art of the country, and my business detaining me in London, 
i remained in my own house with three servants on board 
ivages. I used only to breakfast at home ; and future ages 
m\\ be interested to know that this meal used to consist, at 
ihat period, of tea, a penny roll, a pat of butter, and, perhaps, 
m egg. My weekly bill used invariably to be about fifty shil- 
ings; so that, as I never dined in the house, you see, my 



86 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 






breakfast, consisting of the delicacies before mentioned, cos 
about seven shillings and threepence per diem. I must, there-, 
fore, have consumed daily — 

A quarter of a pound of tea (say) 

A penny roll (say) 

One pound of butter (say) 

One pound of lump sugar 

A new-laid egg 



s. 


d. 


1 


3 


1 





1 


3 


1 





2 


9 



Which is the only possible way I have for making out the sum.] 
Well, I fell ill while under this regimen, and had an illness 
which, but for a certain doctor, who was brought to me by aj 
certain kind friend I had in those da^'s, would, I think, have] 
prevented the possibilitj^ of my telling this interesting anecdote! 
now a dozen j^ears after. Don't be frightened, m}- dear madam ; 
it is not a horrid, sentimental account of a malady 3^ou are 
•coming to — onl}' a question of grocery. This illness, I saj', 
lasted some seventeen da3's, during whicli the servants were 
admirably attentive and kind ; and poor John, especiall}', was 
up at all hours, watching night after night — amiable, cheerful, 
untiring, respectful, the ver}^ best of Johns and nurses. 

Twice or thrice in the seventeen daj^s I may have had a 
glass of eau sucree — sa}' a dozen glasses of eau sucree — cer- 
tainh' not more. Well, this admirable, watchful, cheerful, 
tender, affectionate John brought me in a little bill for seven- 
teen pounds of sugar consumed during the illness — ' ' Often 
'ad sugar and water ; alwa3's was a callin' for it," says John, 
wagging his head quite gravely. You are dead, 3'ears and 
3'^ears ago, poor John — so patient, so friendl3', so kind, so 
cheerful to the invalid in the fever. But confess, now, wherever 
you are, that seventeen pounds of sugar to make six glasses of 
eau sucree was a little too strong, wasn't it, John? Ah, how 
frankl3^, how trustil3% how bravel3' he lied, poor John ! One 
evening, being at Brighton, in the convalescence, I remember 
John's step was unstead3^, his voice thick, his laugh queer — 
and having some quinine to give me, John brought the glass to 
me — not to m3' mouth, but struck me with it prett3' smartl3' in 
the e3'e, which was not the way in which Dr. Elliotson had 
intended his prescription should be taken. Turning that eye 
upon him, I ventured to hint that m3^ attendant had been drink- 
ing. Drinking ! I never was more humiliated at the thought 
of my own injustice than at John's reply. " Drinking ! Sulp 
me ! I have had only one pint of beer with my dinner at one 
o'clock ! " — and he retreats, holding on by a chair. These are 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 8? 

fibs, you see, appertaining to the situation. John is drunk. 
" Sulp him, he has only had an 'alf-pint of beer with his dinner 
six hours ago ; " and none of his fellow-servants will say other- 
wise. Polly is smuggled on board ship. Who tells the heu- 
tenant when he comes his rounds ? Boys are playing cards in 
the bedroom. The outlying fag announces master coming — 
out go candles — cards popped into bed — bo3^s sound asleep. 
Who had that light in the dormitory ? Law bless you ! the 
poor dear innocents are every one snoring. Every one snoring, 
and every snore is a lie told through the nose ! Suppose one of 
your boys or mine is engaged in that awful crime, are we going 
to break our hearts about it? Come, come. We pull a long 
face, waggle a grave head, and chuckle within our waistcoats. 

Between me and those fellow-creatures of mine who are sitting 
in the room below, how strange and wonderful is the partition ! 
We meet at every hour of the daylight, and are indebted to 
each other for a hundred offices of duty and comfort of life ; 
and we live together for 3^ears, and don't know each other. 
John's voice to me is quite different from John's voice when it 
addresses his mates below. If I met Hannah in the street with 
a bonnet on, I doubt whether I should know her. And all 
these good people with whom I may live for years and 3''ears, 
have cares, interests, dear friends and relatives, mayhap schemes, 
passions, longing hopes, tragedies of their own, from which a 
carpet and a few planks and beams utterly separate me. When 
we were at the seaside, and poor Ellen used to look so pale, 
and run after the postman's bell, and seize a letter in a great 
scrawling hand, and read it, and cry in a corner, how should 
we know that the poor little thing's heart was breaking? She 
fetched the water, and she smoothed the ribbons, and she laid 
out the dresses, and brought the early cup of tea in the morn- 
ing, just as if she had had no cares to keep her awake. Henry 
(who lived out of the house) was the servant of a friend of 
mine who lived in chambers. There was a dinner one day, and 
Harrj^ waited all through the dinner. The champagne was 
properl}^ iced, the dinner was excellently served ; every guest 
was attended to ; the dinner disappeared ; the dessert was set ; 
the claret was in perfect order, carefully decanted, and more 
ready. And then Henry said, " If j'^ou please, sir, may I go 
home ? " He had received word that his house was on fire ; 
and, having seen through his dinner, he wished to go and look 
after his children, and little sticks of furniture. Why, such a 
man's livery is a unilbrm of honor. The crest on his button is 
a badge of bravery. 



88 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Do you see — I imagine I do myself — in these little in- ! 
stances, a tinge of humor? Ellen's heart is breaking for hand- ; 
some Jeames of Buckley Square, whose great legs are kneeling, 
and who has given a lock of his precious powdered head, to 
some other than Ellen. Henry is preparing the sauce for his 
master's wild-ducks while the engines are squirting over his 
own little nest and brood. Lift these figures up but a story 
from the basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone. 
We may be en pleine tragedie. Ellen ma}' breathe her last sigh 
in blank verse, calling down blessings upon James the profligate 
who deserts her. Henr}^ is a hero, and epaulettes are on his 
shoulders. Atqui sciebat, &c., whatever tortures are in store 
for him, he will be at his post of duty. ^\ 

You concede, however, that there is a touch of humor in the 
two tragedies here mentioned. Why ? Is it that the idea of 
persons at service is somehow ludicrous ? Perhaps it is made 
more so in this country by the splendid appearance of the liv- 
eried domestics of great people. When you think that we dress 
in black ourselves, and put our fellow-creatures in green, pink, 
or canary-colored breeches ; that we order them to plaster their 
hair with flour, having brushed that nonsense out of our own 
heads fift}' j^ears ago ; that some of the most genteel and stately 
among us cause the men who drive their carriages to put on 
little Albino wigs, and sit behind great nosegays — I say I sup- 
pose it is this heaping of gold lace, gaudy colors, blooming 
plushes, on honest John Trot, which makes the man absurd in 
our eyes, who need be nothing but a simple reputable citizen 
and in-door laborer. Suppose, my dear su-, that you yourself 
were suddenly desired to put on a full dress, or even undress, 
domestic uniform with our friend Jones's crest repeated in 
varied combinations of button on your front and back? Sup- 
pose, madam, your son were told, that he could not get out 
except in lower garments of carnation or amber-colored plush 
— would 3^ou let him? . . . But as you justly say, this is not 
the question, and besides it is a question fraught with danger, 
sir ; and radicalism, sir ; and subversion of the very foundations 
of the social fabric, sir. . . . Well, John, we won't enter on 
30ur great domestic question. Don't let us disport with 
Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge-tools about his 
knife-board : but with Bettj^ and Susan who wield the playful 
mop, and set on the simmering kettle. Surely you have heard 
Mrs. Toddles talking to Mrs. Doddles about their mutual 
maids. Miss Susan must have a silk gown, and Miss Betty 
must wear flowers under her bonnet when she goes to church 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 89 

if you please, and did 3^011 ever hear such impudence? The 
servant in many small establishments is a constant and endless 
theme of tdftk. What small wage, sleep, meal, what endless 
scouring, scolding, tramping on messages fall to that poor 
Susan's lot ; what indignation at the little kindly passino- word 
with the grocer's young man, the pot-boy, the chubby butcher ! 
Where such things will end, my dear Mrs. Toddles, I don't 
know. What wages they will want next, my dear Mrs. Dod- 
dles, &c. 

Here, dear ladies, is an advertisement which I cut out of 
The Times a few days since, expressl}^ for you : 

" A LADY is desirous of obtaining a SITUATION for a very respect- 
J:\_ able young woman as HEAD KITCHEN-MAID under a man-cook. 
She has lived four years under a very good cook and housekeeper. Can 
make ice, and is an excellent baker. She will only take a place in a very 
good family, where she can have the opportunity of improving herself, and, 
if possible, staying for two years. Apply by letter to," &c. &c. 

There, Mrs. Toddles, what do you think of that, and did 3'ou 
ever? Well, no, Mrs. Doddles. U^jon my word now, Mrs. T., 
I don't think I ever did. A respectable 3'oung woman — as 
head kitchen-maid — under a man-cook, will only take a place 
in a very good family, where she can improve, and stay two 
years. Just note up the conditions, Mrs. Toddles, mum, if 
you please, mum, and then let us see ; — 

1. This young woman is to be head kitchen-maid, that is to 

say there is to be a chorus of kitchen-maids, of which 
Y. W. is to be chief. 

2. She will only be situated under a man-cook. (A) Ought 

he to be a French cook ; and (B), if so, would the 
lady desire him to be a Protestant? 
8. She will onty take a place in a very good family. How 
old ought the family to be, and what do you call good ? 
that is the question. How long after the Conquest 
will do? Would a banker's family do, or is a baronet's 
good enough? Best say what rank in the peerage 
would be sufficiently high. But the lady does not say 
whether she would like a High Church or a Low 
Church family. Ought there to be unmarried sons, 
and may they follow a profession ? and please saj- how 
many daughters ; and would the lady like them to be 
piusical? And how many company dinners a week? 
Not too many, for fear of fatiguing the upper kitchen- 



yu ROUND ABorr papers. 



maid ; but sufficient, so as to keep the upper kitchen 
maid's hand in. [N.B. — I think I can see a rather 
bewildered expression on the countenances (W Mesdames 
Doddles and Toddles as I am prattling on in this easy 
bantering way.] 
4. The head kitchen-maid wishes to stay for two years, 
and improve herself under the man-cook, and having 
of course sucked the brains (as the phrase is) from 
under the chefs nightcap, then the head kitchen-maid 
wishes to go. 

And upon my word, Mrs. Toddles, mum, I will go and fetch 
the cab for her. The cab? Why not her ladyship's own 
carriage and pair, and the head coachman to drive away the 
head kitchen-maid ? You see she stipulates for everything — 
the time to come ; the time to stay ; the family she will be 
with ; and as soon -as she has improved herself enough, of 
course the upper kitchen-maid will step into the carriage and 
drive off. 

Well, upon my word and conscience, if things are coming 
to this pass, Mrs. Toddles and Mrs. Doddles, mum, I think 
I will go up stairs and get a basin and a sponge, and then 
down stairs and get some hot water ; and then I will go and 
scrub that chalk-mark off my own door with m}' own hands. 

It is wiped off, I declare ! After ever so many weeks ! 
Who has done it? It was just a little round-about mark, you 
know, and it was there for days and weeks, before I ever 
thought it would be the text of a Roundabout Paper. 



n-™ 



ON^ BEING FOUND OUT. 

At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's reign, when I was 
a bo3^ at a private and preparatory school for 3'oung gentlemen, 
I remember the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, 
to march into a little garden at the back of the house, and 
thence to proceed one b}- one into a tool or hen house, (I was 
but a tender little thing just put into short clothes, and can't 
exactl}^ sa}^ whether the house was for tools or hens,) and in 
that house to put our hands into a sack which stood on a 
bench, a candle burning beside it. I put my hand into the 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 91 

-sack. My hand came out quite black. I went and joined 
the other boys in the schoolroom; and all their hands were 
black too. 

By reason of my tender age (and there are some critics 
who, I hope, will be satisfied by my acknowledging that I am 
a hundred and fifty-six next birthday) I could not understand 
what was the meaning of this night excursion — this candle, 
this tool-house, this bag of soot. I think we little boys were 
taken out of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We came, 
then, and showed our little hands to the master ; washed them 
or not — most probably, I should say, not — and so went be- 
wildered back to bed. 

Something had been stolen in the school that day ; and Mr. 
Wiseacre having read in a book of an ingenious method of 
finding out a thief by making him put his hand into a sack 
(which, if guilty, the rogue would shirk from doing), all we 
boys were subjected to the trial. Goodness knows what the 
lost object was, or who stole it. We all had black hands to 
show the master. And the thief, whoever he was, was not 
Found Out that time. 

I wonder if the rascal is alive — an elderly scoundrel he 
must be b}^ this time ; and a hoary old h3'pocrite, to whom an 
old schoolfellow presents his kindest regards — parenthetically 
remarking what a dreadful place that private school was ; cold, 
chilblains, bad dinners, not enough victuals, and caning awful ! 
— Are you alive still, I say, 3'ou nameless villain, who escaped 
discovery on that day of crime? I hope 3'ou have escaped 
often since, old sinner. Ah, what a luck}' thing it is, for j'ou 
and me, my man, that we are not found out in all our peccadil- 
loes ; and that our backs can slip awa}" from the master and 
the cane ! 

Just consider what hfe would be, if every rogue was found 
out, and flogged coram populo! What a butcher}', what an 
indecency, what an endless swishing of the rod ! Don't cry out 
about my misanthropy. My good friend Mealymouth, I will 
trouble you to tell me, do you go to church? When there, do 
you say, or do you not, that you are a miserable sinner? and 
saying so do you believe or disbelieve it? If you are a M. S., 
don't you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are 
to be let oflf? I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we 
are not all found out ! 

Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being 
found out, and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in 
all the school being whipped ; and then the assistants, and then 



92 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

the head master (Dr. Badford let us call him). Fancy the 
provost-marshal being tied up, having previously superintended 
the correction of the whole army. After the young gentlemen 
have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr. Lincoln- 
sinn being taken up for certain faults in his Essay and Review. 
After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist 
up a bishop, and give him a couple of dozen ! (I see my Lord 
Bishop of Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture 
on his right reverend bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, 
what are we to say to the Minister who appointed him ? My 
Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have to use personal correc- 
tion to a boy of your age ; but really . . . Sistc tandem^ car- 
nifex! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops pow- 
erless, appalled at the quantity of bii-ch which it must cut and 
brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again ; 
and protest, my dear brethren, against our having our de- 
serts. 

To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough ; 
but imagine all women found out in the distinguished social 
circle in which you and I have the honor to move. Is it not 
a merc}^ that a many of these fan- criminals remain unpunished 
and undiscovered ! There is Mrs. Longbow, who is for ever 
practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too ; when 3'ou 
meet her j^ou don't call her liar, and charge her with the wick- 
edness she has done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who 
passes for a most respectable woman, and a model in society. 
There is no use in saying what 3^ou really know regarding her 
and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter — what a little 
haughty prude it is ; and yet we know stories about her which are 
not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of the 
good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want 
your children to know the history of that lady in the next box, 
who is so handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me, 
what would life be if we were all found out, and punished for 
all our faults ? Jack Ketch would be in permanence ; and then 
who would hang Jack Ketch ? 

They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. 
Psha ! " I have heard an authorit3- awfully competent vow and 
declare that scores and hundreds of murders are committed, 
and nobody is the wiser. That terrible man mentioned one 
or two ways of committing murder, which he maintained were 
quite common, and were scarcely ever found out. A man, for 
instance, comes home to his wife, and . . . but I pause — I 
know that this Magazine has a very large circulation. Hun- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 93 

drecls and hundreds of thousands — why not say a million of 
people at once? — well, say a million, read it. And amono-st 
these countless readers, I might be teaching some monster how 
to make away with his wife without being found out, some fiend 
of a woman how to destroy her dear husband. I will 7iot then tell 
this easy and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a 
most respectable party in the confidence of private intercourse. 
Suppose some gentle reader were to try this most simple and 
easy receipt — it seems to me almost infallible — and come to 
grief in consequence, and be found out and hanged ? Should 
I ever pardon myself for having been the means of doing injury 
to a single one of our esteemed subscribers ? The prescription 
whereof I speak — that is to say, whereof I don't speak — shall 
be buried in this bosom. No, I am a humane man. I am 
not one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my wife, "My 
dear ! I am going away for a few days to Brighton. Here are 
all the keys of the house. You may open every door and 
closet, except the one at the end o^ the oak-room opposite the 
fireplace, with the little bronze Shakespeare on the mantel-piece 
(or what not)." I don't say this to a woman — unless, to be 
sure, I want to get rid of her — because, after such a caution, 
I know she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about the 
closet at all. I keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom 
I love, but who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's 
way. You toss up your head, dear angel, drub on the ground 
with your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy 
fingers, and cr}', "Oh, sneerer! You don't know the depth 
of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire 
absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would 
you libel us so ! " Ah, Delia ! dear, dear Delia ! It is because 
I fancy I do know something about you (not all, mind — no, 
no ; no man knows that) — Ah, m}^ bride, my ringdove, my 
rose, my poppet — choose, in fact, whatever name j'ou like — 
bulbul of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of my 
darkling life, and joy of my dungeoned existence, it is because 
I do know a little about you that I conclude to say nothing of 
that private closet, and keep my key in my pocket. You take 
awa}' that closet-key then, and the house-ke3\ You lock Delia 
in. You keep her out of harm's way and gadding, and so she 
never can be found out. 

And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we 
are being found out ever}' da}'. You remember that old stor}*- 
of the Abbe Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one 
night how the first confession he ever received was — from a 



94 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



^ 



murderer let us say. Presently enters to supper the Marquis 
cle Croquemitaine. '' Palsambleu, abbe!" says the brilliant 
marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, " are you here? Gentlemen 
and ladies ! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made him a 
confession, which I promise you astonished him." 

To be sure how queerly things are found out ! Here is an 
instance. Only the other day I was writing in these Round- 
about Papers about a certain man, whom I facetiousl}^ called 
Baggs, and who had abused me to my friends, who of course 
told me. Shortly after that paper was published another friend 
— Sacks let us call him — scowls fiercely at me as I am sitting 
in perfect good-humor at the club, and passes on without speak- 
ing. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks thinks it is about him that I 
was writing : whereas, upon my honor and conscience, I never 
had him once in my mind, and was pointing my moral from 
quite another man. But don't you see, by this wrath of the 
guilty-conscienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me too? 
He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused. He 
has winced when nobod}' thought of hitting him. I did but put 
the cap out, and madl}^ butting and chafing, behold my friend 
rushes out to put his head into it ! Never mind. Sacks, you are 
found out ; but I bear j^ou no malice, my man. 

And yet to be found out, I know from m}^ own expeiience, 
must be painful and odious, and cruell}' mortifying to the inward 
vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce 
moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I 
keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully 
at cabmen and women ; brandish m}' bludgeon, and perhaps 
knock down a little man or two with it : brag of the images 
which I break at the shooting-gallerj-, and pass amongst my 
friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor 
dragon. Ah me ! Suppose some brisk little chap steps up and 
gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with all the heads of 
m}^ friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation 
is gone. I frighten no man more. M}^ nose is pulled by 
whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am 
found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were 
yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I alwaj^s 
knew that I was a liij'-liver, and expected that I should be found 
out some day. 

That certaint}^ of being found out must haunt and depress 
many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let us say it is a clergyman, 
who can pump copious floods of tears out of his own e^-es and 
those of his audience. He thinks to himself, " I am but a poor 



tlOUNDABOUT PAPERS. 95 

swindling, chattering rogue. My bills are unpaid. I have jilted 
several women whom I have promised to many. I don't know 
whether I believe what I preach, and 1 know I have stolen the 
ver}^ sermon over which I have been snivelling. Have they found 
me out?" says he, as his head drops down on the cushion. 

Then your waiter, poet, historian, noveUst, or what not? 
The Beacon says that ''Jones's work is one of the first order." 
The Lamp declares that " Jones's tragedy surpasses every work 
since the days of Him of Avon." The Comet asserts that " J's 
' Life of Goody Twoshoes ' is a Kr^/xa k det, a noble and en- 
during monument to the fame of that admirable Englishwoman," 
and so forth. But then Jones knows that he has lent the critic 
of the Beacon five pounds ; that his pubhsher has a half-share 
in the Lamp ; and that the Comet comes repeatedly' to dine with 
him. It is all very well. Jones is immortal until he is found 
out ; and then down comes the extinguisher, and the immortal 
is dead and buried. The idea (^dies irce !) of discovery must 
haunt man}' a man, and make him uneasy, as the trumpets are 
puffing in his triumph. Brown, who has a higher place than he 
deserves, cowers before Smith, who has found him out. What 
is a chorus of critics shouting "Bravo?" — a public clapping 
hands and flinging garlands? Brown knows that Smith has 
found him out. Puff, trumpets ! Wave, banners ! Huzza, 
boys, for the immortal Brown! "This is all very well," B. 
thinks (bowing the while, smiling, lading his hand to his 
heart) ; "but there stands Smith at the window : he has measured 
me ; and some day the others will find me out too." It is a 
very curious sensation to sit by a man who has found 3'ou out, 
and who, as you know, has found you out ; or, vice versd, to sit 
with a man whom yoic have found out. His talent ? Bah ! 
His virtue? We know a little story or two about his virtue, 
and he knows we know it. We are thinking over friend Rob- 
inson's antecedents, as we grin, bow and talk ; and we are both 
humbugs together. Robinson a good fellow, is he ? You know 
how he behaved to Hicks ? A good-natured man, is he? Pray 
do you remember that little story of Mrs. Robinson's black eye? 
How men have to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed, and try 
and sleep, with this dread of being found out on their con- 
sciences ! Bardolpli, who has robbed a church, and Nym, who 
has taken a purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their 
pipes with their companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appears, 
and says, "Oh, Bardolph ! I want you about that there pyx 
business ! " Mr. Bardolph knocks the ashes out of his pipe, 
puts out his hands to the little steel cuffs, and walks awa,)' quite 



96 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

meekly. He is found out. He must go. " Good-by, Doll 
Tearsheet ! Good-by, Mrs. Quickly, ma'am ! " The other 
gentlemen and ladies de la socute look on and exchange mute 
adieux with the departing friends. And an assured time will 
come when the other gentlemen and ladies will be found out 
too. 

What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature it has 
been that, for the most part, our womankind are not endowed 
with the facult}' of finding us out ! They don't doubt, and 
probe, and weigh, and take 3'our measure. La}' down this paper, 
m}^ benevolent friend and reader, go into your drawing-room 
now, and utter a joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence the ladies 
there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's house, and tell 
Mrs. Brown and the 3'Oung ladies what you think of him, and see 
what a welcome 3'ou will get ! In like manner, let him come to 
3'our house, and tell your good lady his candid opinion of 3^ou, 
and fanc3^ how she will receive him ! Would 3^ou have your 
wife and cliildren know 3"0u exactl3^ for what you are, and es- 
teem 3"ou precise^ at 3'our worth ? If so, my friend, you will 
live in a drear3' house, and 3'ou will have but a chill3' fireside. 
Do 3^ou suppose the people round it don't see 3^our homely face 
as under a glamour, and, as it were, with a halo of love round 
it ? You don't fanc3^ you are, as 3'ou seem to them ? No such 
thing, m3^ man. Put awa3^ that monstrous conceit, and be 
thankful that they have not found 3^ou out. 



ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. 

Where have I just read of a game pla3^ed at a countr3'^ 
house ? The party assembles round a table with pens, ink, and 
paper. Some one narrates a tale containing more or less inci- 
dents and personages. Each person of the compan3^ then writes 
down, to the best of his memor3^ and abilit3^, the anecdote just 
narrated, and finally the papers are to be read out. I do not 
say I should like to play often at this game, which might pos- 
sibty be a tedious and length3' pastime, not b3' an3^ means so 
amusing as smoking a cigar in the conservator3' ; or even listen- 
ing to the 3'oung ladies pla3'ing their piano-pieces ; or to Hobbs 
and Nobbs lingering round the bottle and talking over the 
morning's run with the hounds ; but surel}' it is a moral and in- 



j\v>-uiTi>^ TiOTTT PAPERS. ^^ 

genious sport. The}^ sa}^ the variety of narratives is often very 
odd and amusing. The original story becomes so changed and 
distorted that at the end of all the statements you are puzzled 
to know where the truth is at all. As time is of small im- 
portance to the cheerful persons engaged in this sport, perhaps 
a good wa}^ of playing it would be to spread it over a couple of 
years. Let the people who played the game in '60 all meet and 
pla}^ it once more in '61, and each write his story over again. 
Then bring out your original and compare notes. Not only 
will the stories differ from each other, but the writers will prob- 
ably differ from themselves. In the course of the year the in- 
cidents will grow or will dwindle strangel3\ The least authentic 
of the statements will be so lively or so malicious, or so neatly 
put, that it will appear most like the truth. I like these tales 
and sportive exercises. I had begun a little print collection 
once. I had Addison in his nightgown in bed at Holland 
House, requesting 3'oung Lord Warwick to remark how a 
Christian should die. I had Cambronne clutching his cocked 
hat and uttering the immortal la Garde meurt et ne se rend pas. 
I had the " Vengeur" going down, and all the crew hurraying 
like madmen. I had Alfred toasting the muffin ; Curtius (Ha3'- 
don) jumping into the gulf; with extracts from Napoleon's 
bulletins, and a fine authentic portrait of Baron Munchausen. 

What man who has been before the public at all has not 
heard similar wonderful anecdotes regarding himself and his 
own history? In these humble essaykins I have taken leave to 
egotize. I cry out about the shoes which pinch me, and, as t 
fanc}^ more natural^ and pathetically than if m}' neighbor's 
corns were trodden under foot. I prattle about the dish which 
I love, the wine which I like, the talk I heard yesterday — about 
Brown's absurd airs — Jones's ridiculous elation when he thinks 
he has caught me in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is 
that Jones will read this, and will perfectly well know that I 
mean him, and that we shall meet and grin at each other with 
entire pohteness.) This is not the highest kind of speculation, 
I confess, but it is a gossip which amuses some folks. A brisk 
and honest small-beer will refresh those who do not care for the 
frothy outpourings of heavier taps. A two of clubs may be a 
good, handy little card sometimes, and able to tackle a king of 
diamonds, if it is a little trump. Some philosophers get their 
wisdom with deep thought and out of ponderous libraries ; I 
pick up my small crumbs of cogitation at a dinner-table ; or 
from Mrs. Mary and Miss Louisa, as they are prattling over 
their five-o'cloqk tea. 

? 



\ 



98 



ROUNDABOUT^^ ''^^^^^^^^^^ 



« 



Well, yesterda}' at dinner Juciindus was good enough to tell 
me a story about myself, which he had heard from a lady of 
his acquaintance, to whom I send m}^ best compliments. The 
tale is this. At nine o'clock on the evening of the 31st of No- 
vember last, just before sunset, I was seen leaving No. 96, 
Abbe}' Road, St. John's Wood, leading two little children by 
the hand, one of them in a nankeen pelisse, and the other hav- 
ing a mole on the third finger of his left hand (she thinks it was 
the third finger, but is quite sure it was the left hand). Thence 
I walked with them to Charles Boroughbridge's, pork and 
sausage man, No. 29, Upper Theresa Road. Here, whilst I 
left the httle girl innocent!}' eating a polony in the front shop, 
I and Boroughbridge retired with the boy into the back parlor, 
where Mrs. Boroughbridge was playing cribbage. She jDut up 
the cards and boxes, took out a chopper and a napkin, and we 
cut the little boy's little throat (which he bore with great pluck 
and resolution) , and made him into sausage-meat by the aid of 
Purkis's excellent sausage-machine. The little girl at first 
could not understand her brother's absence, but, under the pre- 
tence of taking her to see Mr. Fechter in Hamlet^ I led her 
down to the New River at Sadler's Wells, where a bod}^ of a 
child in a nankeen pelisse was subsequently found, and has 
never been recognized to the present day. And this Mrs. Lynx 
can aver, because she saw the whole transaction with her own 
e3^es, as she told Mr. Jucundus. 

I have altered the little details of the anecdote somewhat. 
But this story is, I vow and declare, as true as Mrs L3'nx's. 
Gracious goodness ! how do hes begin ? What are the aver- 
ages of l^^ing? Is the same amount of lies told about every 
man, and do we pretty much all tell the same amount of lies? 
Is the average greater in Ireland than in Scotland, or vice versa 
— among women than among men ? Is this a lie I am telling 
now? If I am talking about 3'ou, the odds are, perhaps, that 
it is. I look back at some which have been told about me, and 
speculate on them with thanks and wonder. Dear friends have 
told them of me, have told them to me of mj'self. Have they 
not to and of j^ou, dear friend? A friend of mine was dining 
at a large dinner of clerg3'men, and a stor3^, as true as the 
sausage stor3" above given, was told regarding me, b3' one of 
those reverend divines, in whose frock sits some anile chatter- 
boxes, as an3' man who knows this world knows. The3' take the 
privilege of their gown. They cabal, and tattle, and hiss, and 
cackle comminations under their breath. I sa3' the old women 
of the other sex are not more talkative or more mischievous 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 99 

than some of these. " Such a man ought not to be spoken to," 
says Gobemouche, narrating the stor}^ — and such a story! 
"And I am surprised he is admitted into society at all." Yes, 
dear Gobemouche, but the stor}^ wasn't true ; and 1 had no 
more done the wicked deed in question than I had run away 
with the Queen of Sheba. 

I have always longed to know what that storj^ was (or what 
collection of histories), which a lady had in her mind to whom a 
servant of mine applied for a place, when I was breaking up 
my establishment once and going abroad. Brown went with a 
very good character from us, which, indeed, she fully deserved 
after several years' faithful service. But when Mrs. Jones read 
the name of the person out of whose employment Brown came, 
" That is quite sufficient," saj-s Mrs. Jones. " You may go. I 
will never take a servant out of that house." Ah, Mrs. Jones, 
how I should like to know what that crime was, or what that series 
of villanies, which made you determine never to take a servant 
out of my house. Do you believe in the story of the little boy 
and the sausages? Have you swallowed that little minced 
infant ? Have you devoured that young Polonius ? Upon my 
word you have maw enough. We somehow greedily gobble 
down all stories in which the characters of our friends arc 
chopped up, and believe wrong of them without inquiry. In 
a late serial work written by this hand, I remember making 
some pathetic remarks about our propensity to believe ill of 
our neighbors — and I remember the remarks, not because they 
were valuable, or novel, or ingenious, but because, within three 
days after they had appeared in print, the moralist who wrote 
them, walking home with a friend, heard a story about another 
friend, which story he straightway believed, and which story 
was scarcel}' more true than that sausage fable which is here 
set down. mea culpa ^ mea maxima culpa ! But though the 
preacher trips, shall not the doctrine be good? Yea, brethren ! 
Here be the rods. Look 3^ou, here are the scourges. Choose 
me a nice long, swishing, buddy one, light and well-poised in 
the handle, thick and bushy at the tail. Pick me out a whip- 
cord thong with some dainty knots in it — and now — we all 
deserve it — whish, whish, whish ! Let us cut into each other 
all round. 

A favorite Uar and servant of mine was a man I once had to 
drive a brougham. He never came to my house, except for 
orders, and once when he helped to wait at dinner so clumsily 
that it was agreed we would dispense with his further efforts. 
The (job) brougham horse used to look dreadfully lean and 



100 , ROUlsTDABOUT PAPERS. 



« 



tired, and the livery-stable keeper complained that we worked 
him too hard. Now, it turned out that there was a neighboring 
butcher's lady who liked to ride in a brougham ; and Tomkins 
lent her ours, drove her cheerfully to Richmond and Putney, 
and, I suppose, took out a payment in mutton-chops. . We gave 
this good Tomkins wine and medicine for his family when sick 
— we supplied him with little comforts and extras which need 
not now be remembered — and the grateful creature rewarded us 
b}^ informing some of our tradesmen whom he honored with his 
custom, "Mr. Roundabout? Lor' bless 3^ou ! I carry him up 
to bed drunk every night in the week." He, Tomkins, being 
a man of seven stone weight and five feet high ; whereas his 
employer was — but here modesty interferes, and I decline to 
enter into the avoirdupois question. 

Now, what was Tomkins's motive for the utterance and dis- 
semination of these lies? The}^ could further no conceivable 
end or interest of his own. Had the}^ been true stories, Tom- 
kins's master would still, and reasonably, have been more angry 
than at the fables. It was but suicidal slander on the part of 
Tomkins — must come to a discovery — must end in a punish- 
ment. The poor wretch had got his place under, as it turned 
out, a fictitious character. He might have stayed in it, for of 
course Tomkins had a wife and poor innocent children. He 
might have had bread, beer, bed, character, coats, coals. He 
might have nestled in our little island, comfortably sheltered 
from the storms of life ; but we were compelled to cast him out, 
and send him driving, lonely, perishing, tossing, starving, to 
sea — to drown. To drown? There be other modes of death 
whereby rogues die. Good-by, Tomkins. And so the night- 
cap is put on, and the bolt is drawn for poor T. 

Suppose we were to invite volunteers amongst our respected 
readers to send in little statements of the lies which they know 
have been told about themselves ; what a heap of correspond- 
ence, what an exaggeration of malignities, what a crackling 
bonfire of incendiar}' falsehoods, might we not gather together ! 
And a lie once set going, having the breath of life breathed 
into it by the father of Ij^ng, and ordered to run its diabolical 
little course, hves with a prodigious vitalit3^ You say, " Mag- 
na est Veritas et prcevaleUt.^' Psha ! Great lies are as great as 
great truths, and prevail constant^, and da}^ after day. Take 
an instance or two out of my own little budget. I sit near a 
gentleman at dinner, and the conversation turns upon a certain 
anonymous literarj^ performance which at the time is amusing 
the town. *'0h," says the gentleman, "everybody knows 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 101 

who wrote that paper : it is Momus's." I was a young author 
at the time, perhaps proud of my bantUng : " I beg your par- 
don," I say, " it was written by your humble servant." " In- 
deed ! " was all that the man replied, and he shrugged his 
shoulders, turned his back, and talked to his other neio-hbor. I 
never heard sarcastic incredulity more finely conveyed than 
by that "indeed." "Impudent liar," the gentleman's face 
said, as clear as face could speak. Where was Magna Veritas, 
and how did she prevail then ? She lifted up her voice, she made 
her appeal, and she was kicked out of court. In New York I 
read a newspaper criticism one day (b}^ an exile from our shores 
who has taken up his abode in the Western Republic), com- 
menting upon a letter of mine which had appeared in a contem- 
porary volume, and wherein it was stated that the writer was a 
lad in such and such a year, and, in point of fact, I was, at the 
period spoken of, nineteen years of age. "Falsehood, Mr. 
Roundabout," says the noble critic : " You were then not a lad ; 
you were then six-and-twenty years of age." You see he knew 
better than papa and mamma and parish register. It was easier 
for him to think and say I lied, on a twopenny matter connected 
with my own affairs, than to imagine he was mistaken. Years 
ago, in a time when we were very mad wags, Arcturus and m}^- 
self met a gentleman from China who knew the language. We 
began to speak Chinese against him. We said we were born in 
China. We were two to one. We spoke the mandarin dialect 
with perfect fluency. We had the company with us ; as in the 
old, old days, the squeak of the real pig was voted not to be so 
natural as the squeak of the sham pig. O Arcturus, the sham 
pig squeaks in our streets now to the applause of multitudes, 
and the real porker grunts unheeded in his sty ! 

I once talked for some little time with an amiable lady : it 
was for the first time ; and I saw an expression of surprise on 
her kind face, which said as plainly as face could say, " Sir, do 
you know that up to this moment I have had a certain opinion 
of you, and that I begin to think I have been mistaken or 
misled?" I not only know that she had heard evil reports of 
me, but I know who told her — one of those acute fellows, my 
dear brethren, of whom we spoke in a previous sermon, who 
has found me out — found out actions which I never did, found 
out thoughts and sayings which I never spoke, and judged me 
accordingly. Ah, my lad! have I found you out? risum 
teneatis. Perhaps the person I am accusing is no more guilty 
than I. 

How comes it that the evil which men say spreads so widely 



102 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

and lasts so long, whilst our good, kind words don't seem 
somehow to take root and bear blossom? Is it that in the 
ston}^ hearts of mankind these prett}^ flowers can't find a place 
to grow? Certain it is that scandal is good, brisk talli, whereas 
praise of one's neighbor is b3^ no means lively hearing. An 
acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mus- 
tard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite ; whereas a slice 
of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing 
meat. 

Now, such being the case, my dear worth}^ Mrs. Candor, in 
whom I know there are a hundred good and generous qualities : 
it being perfectly clear that the good things which we say of our 
neighbors don't fructify, but somehow perish in the ground 
where they are dropped, whilst the evil words are wafted by 
all the winds of scandal, take root in all soils, and flourish 
amazingly — seeing, I sa}^, that this conversation does not give 
us a fair chance, suppose we give up censoriousness altogether, 
and decline uttering our opinions about Brown, Jones, and 
Robinson (and Mesdames B., J., and R.) at all. We may be 
mistaken about every one of them, as, please goodness, those 
anecdote-mongers against whom I have uttered mj^ meek pro- 
test have been mistaken about me. We need not go to the 
extent of saying that Mrs. Manning was an amiable creature, 
much misunderstood ; and Jack Thurtell a gallant, unfortunate 
fellow, not near so black as he was painted ; but we will try 
and avoid personalities altogether in talk, won't we ? We will 
range the fields of science, dear madam, and communicate to 
each other the pleasing results of our studies. We will, if you 
please, examine the infinitesimal wonders of nature through the 
microscope. We will cultivate entomology. We will sit with 
our arms round each other's waists on the pons asinorum^ and 
see the stream of mathematics flow beneath. We will take 
refuge in cards, and play at " beggar my neighbor," not abuse 
my neighbor. We will go to the Zoological Gardens and talk 
freely about the gorilla and his kindred, but not talk about 
people who can talk in their turn. Suppose we praise the High 
Church? we offend the Low Church. The Broad Church? 
High and Low are both offended. What do you think of Lord 
Derby as a politician? And what is your opinion of Lord 
Palmers ton? If you please, will you play me those lovely 
variations of "In ni}' cottage neai- a wood? " It is a charming 
air (you know it in French, I suppose ? Ah! te dirai-je^ maman !) 
and was a favorite with poor Marie Antoinette. I saj^ " poor," 
because I have a right to speak with pity of a sovereign who 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 103 

was renowned for so much beauty and so much misfortune. 
But as for giving any opinion on her conduct, saying that she 
was good or bad, or indifferent, goodness forbid ! We have 
agreed we will not be censorious. Let us have a game at cards 
— at ecarte, if you please. You deal. I ask for cards. I lead 
the deuce of clubs. . . . 

What ? there is no deuce ! Deuce take it ! What ? People 
will go on talking about their neighbors, and won't have their 
mouths stopped by cards, or ever so much microscopes aiid 
aquariums? Ah, my poor dear Mrs. Candor, I agree with yoiL. 
By the wa}^ did you ever see anything like Lady Godiva 
Trotter's dress last night? People will go on chatterino-, 
although we hold our tongues ; and, after all, my good soul, 
what will their scandal matter a hundred years hence ? 



SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. 

Not long since, at a certain banquet, I had the good fortune 
to sit by Doctor Polymathesis, who knows everything, and 
who, about the time when the claret made its appearance, men- 
tioned that old dictum of the grumbling Oxford Don, that " All 
Claret loould be port if it could ! " Imbibing a bumper of one or 
the other not ungratefully, I thought to myself, " Here surely, 
Mr. Roundabout, is a good text for one of your reverence's 
sermons." Let us apply to the human race, dear brethren, 
what is here said of the vintages of Portugal and Gascony, and 
we shall have no difficulty in perceiving how man}' clarets aspire 
to be ports in their way ; how most men and women of our ac- 
quaintance, how we ourselves, are Aquitanians giving ourselves 
Lusitanian airs ; how we wish to have credit for being stronger, 
braver, more beautiful, more worth}^ than we really are. 

Nay, the beginning of this hypocrisy — a desire to excel, a 
desire to be hearty, fruity, generous, strength-imparting — is a 
virtuous and noble ambition ; and it is most difficult for a man 
in his own case, or his neighbor's, to say at what point this 
ambition transgresses the boundary of virtue, and becomes 
vanity, pretence, and self-seeking. You are a poor man, let 
us say, showing a bold face to adverse fortune, and wearing a 
confident aspect. Your purse is very narrow, but you owe no 
man a penny ; your means are scanty, but your wife's gown is 



104 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

decent ; your old coat well brushed ; j^our children at a good 
school ; 3"ou grumble to no one ; ask favors of no one ; truckle 
to no neighbors on account of their superior rank, or (a worse, 
and a meaner, and a more common crime still) envy none for 
their better fortune. To all outward appearances 3'ou are as 
well to do as 3'our neighbors, who have thrice 3^011 r income. 
There ma}" be in this case some little mixture of pretension in 
your life and behavior. You certainly do put on a smihng face 
whilst fortune is pinching ^^ou. Your wife and girls, so smart 
and neat at evening parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling 
all day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet. You 
give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but are content 
yourself with a glass of whiskey- and- water. You avoid a cab, 
saying that of all things 3'ou like to walk home after dinner 
(which 3^«B know, my good friend, is a fib). I grant 3'ou that 
in this scheme of life there does enter ever so little h3-pocris3" ; 
that this claret is loaded, as it were ; but 3^our desire to portify 
3"0urself is amiable, is pardonable, is perhaps honorable : and 
were there no other hypocrisies than 3"ours in the world we 
should be a set of worthy fellows ; and sermonlzers, moralizers, 
satirizers, would have to hold their tongues, and go to some 
other trade to get a living. 

But 3"ou know 3^ou will step over that boundary line of virtue 
and modest3", into the district where humbug and vauit3' begin, 
and there the moralizer catches you and makes an example of 
3'ou. For instance, in a certain novel in another place my 
friend Mr. Talbot Tw3'sden is mentioned — a man whom you 
and I know to be a wretched ordinaire, but who persists in 
treating himself as if he was the finest '20 port. In our Britain 
there are hundreds of men like him ; for ever striving to swell 
beyond their natural size, to strain be3'ond their natural strength, 
to step be3"ond their natural stride. Search, search within 3"our 
own waistcoats, dear brethi'en — you know in your hearts, which 
of 3^our ordinaire qualities 3'ou would pass ofl^, and fain consider 
as first-rate port. And why not 3'ou 3"ourself, Mr. Preacher ? 
sa3"S the congregation. Dearl3'^ beloved, neither in or out of this 
pulpit do I profess to be bigger, or cleverer, or wiser, or better 
than an3" of you. A short while since, a certain Reviewer an- 
nounced that I gave myself great pretensions as a philosopher. 
I a philosopher ! I advance pretensions ! My dear Saturday 
friend. And 3"0U ? Don't 3"ou teach ever3i:hing to ever3^bod3' ? 
and punish the naught3^ boys if the3' don't learn as you bid 
them? You teach politics to Lord John and Mr. Gladstone. 
You teach poets how to write ; painters, how to paint ; gentle- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 105 

men, manners; and opera-dancers, how to pirouette. I was 
not a little amused of late b}^ an instance of the modest}^ of our 
Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than the Athenians, and 
kpropos of a Greek book by a Greek author, sat down and 
gravely showed the Greek gentleman how to write his own 
language. 

No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all ; but 
offer in these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at 18s. per 
doz. let us sa}^, grown on my own hillside, and offered de bun 
cceur to those who will sit down under my tonnelle^ and have a 
half-hour's drink and gossip. It is none of your hot porto, my 
friend. I know there is much better and stronger liquor else- 
where. Some pronounce it sour : some say it is thin ; some 
that it has wofuUy lost its flavor. This may or may not be 
true. There are good and bad years ; years that surprise every, 
body ; 3^ears of which the produce is small and bad, or rich and 
plentiful. But if my tap is not genuine it is naught, and no 
man should give himself the trouble to drink it. I do not even 
sa}^ that I would be port if I could ; knowing that port (by 
which I would imply much stronger, deeper, richer, and more 
durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not relished by 
all palates, or suitable to all heads. We will assume then, 
dear brother, that you and I are tolerably modest people ; and, 
ourselves being thus out of the question, proceed to show how 
pretentious our neighbors are, and how very many of them 
would be port if they could. 

Have you never seen a small man from college placed 
amongst great folk, and giving himself the airs of a man of 
fashion ? He goes back to his common room with fond remi- 
niscences of Ermine Castle or Strawberry Hall. He writes to 
the dear countess, to say that dear Lord Lollypop is getting on 
very well at St. Boniface, and that the accident which he met 
with in a scuffle with an inebriated bargeman onl}' showed his 
spirit and honor, and will not permanently^ disfigure his lord- 
ship's nose. He gets his clothes from dear Loll3'pop's London 
tailor, and wears a mauve or magenta tie when he rides out to 
see the hounds. A love of fashionable people is a weakness, I 
do not say of all, but of some tutors. Witness that Eton tutor 
t'other da}^, who intimated that in Cornhill we could not under- 
stand the perfect purity, delicacy, and refinement of those gen- 
teel families who sent their sons to Eton. O usher, mo7i ami! 
Old Sam Johnson, who, too, had been an iiehar in his early hfe, 
kept a little of that weakness always. Suppose Goldsmith had 
knocked him up at three in the morning and proposed a boat 




106 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

to Greenwich, as Topham Beauclerc and his friend did, would 
he have said, " What, m}- bo}^ are you for a froUc? I'm with 
you ! " and gone and put on his clothes ? Rather he would Mi 
have pitched poor Goldsmith down stairs. He would have liked 
to be port if he could. Of course we wouldn't. Our opinion 
of the Portugal grape is known. It grows very high, and is 
very sour, and we don't go for that kind of grape at all. 

' ' I was walking with Mr. Fox " — and sure this anecdote 
comes very pat after the grapes — " I was walking with Mr. w 
Fox in the Louvre," sa3's Benjamin West (apud some paper I 
have just been reading), " and I remarked how man}^ people 
turned round to look at me. This shows the respect of the 
French for the fine arts." This is a curious instance of a very 
small claret indeed, which imagined itself to be port of the 
strongest bod}^ There are not man}- instances of a faith so - 
deep, so simple, so satisfactory as this. I have met man}^ who 
would like to be port ; but with few of the Gascon sort, who 
absolutel}' believed they were port. George III. believed in 
West's port and thought Re^'nolds's overrated stuff. When I 
saw West's pictures at Philadelphia, I looked at them with 
astonishment and awe. Hide, blushing glory, hide your head 
under j^our old nightcap. O immortality ! is this the end of 
you? Did any of 3'ou, m}^ dear brethren, ever try and read 
" Blackmore's Poems," or the "Epics of Baour-Lormian," or 
the ' ' Henriade," or — what shall we say ? — PoUok's ' ' Course of 
Time ? " They were thought to be more lasting than brass b}^ 
some people, and where are they now? And our masterpieces 
of literature — our poets — that, if not immortal, at any rate, 
are to last their fift}', their hundred 3"ears — oh, sirs, don't you 
think a ver}^ small cellar will hold them ? 

Those poor people in brass, on pedestals, hectoring about 
Trafalgar Square and that neighborhood, don't 3'ou think man3' 
of them — apart even from the ridiculous execution — cut 
rather a ridiculous figure, and that we are too eager to set up 
our ordinaire heroism and talent for port? A Duke of Well- 
ington or two I will grant, though even of these idols a moder- 
ate suppty will be sufficient. Some 3'ears ago a famous and 
witt3^ French critic was in London, with whom I walked the 
streets. I am ashamed to sa3' that I informed him (being in 
hopes that he was about to write ^ome papers regarding the 
manners and customs of this countr3^) that all the statues he 
saw represented the Duke of Wellington. That on the arch 
opposite Apsley House? the Duke in a cloak, and 'cocked hat, 
on horseback. That behind Apsley House in an airy fig-leaf 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 107 

costume? the Duke again. That in Cockspur Street? the Duke 
with a pigtail — and so on. I showed him an army of Dukes. 
There are many bronze heroes who after a few years look 
alread}^ as foolish, awkward, and out of place as a man, say at 
Shoolbred's or Swan and Edgar's. For example, those three 
Grenadiers in Pall Mall, who have been up only a few months, 
don't 3'ou pity those unhappy household troops, who have to 
stand frowning and looking fierce there ; and think the}^ would 
like to step down and go to barracks ? That they fought very 
bravely there is no doubt ; but so did the Russians fight very 
bravely ; and the French fight very bravely ; and so did Colo- 
nel Jones and the 99th, and Colonel Brown and the 100th ; and 
I say again that ordinaire should not give itself port airs, and 
that an honest ordinaire would blush to be found swaggering 
so. I am sure if j^ou could consult the Duke of York, who is 
impaled on his column between the two clubs, and ask his late 
Roj^al Highness whether he thought he ought to remain there, 
he would say no. A brave, worth}' man, not a braggart or 
boaster, to be put upon that heroic perch must be painful to 
him. Lord George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of 
the family park in Cavendish Square, ma}^ conceive that he has 
a right to remain in his place. But look at William of Cum- 
berland, with his hat cocked over his eye, prancing behind 
Lord George on his Roman-nosed charger ; he, depend on it, 
would be for getting off his horse if he had the permission. He 
did not hesitate about trifles, as we know ; but he was a ver}^ 
truth-telling and honorable soldier : and as for heroic rank and 
statuesque dignity, I would wager a dozen of '20 port against 
a bottle of pure and sound Bordeaux, at 18s. per dozen (bottles 
included), that he never would think of claiming any such 
absurd distinction. They have got a statue of Thomas Moore 
at Dublin, I hear. Is he on horseback? Some men should 
have, say, a fifty years' lease of glory. After a while some 
gentlemen now in brass should go to the melting furnace, and 
reappear in some other gentleman's shape. Lately I saw that 
Melville column rising over Edinburgh ; come, good men and 
true, don't you feel a little awkward and uneasy when 3'ou walk 
under it? Who was this to stand in heroic places? and is yon 
the man whom Scotchmen most delight to honor? I must own 
deferentially that there is a tendency in North Britain to over- 
esteem its heroes. Scotch ale is very good and strong, but it 
is not stronger than all the other beer in the world, as some 
Scottish patriots would insist. When there has been a war, 
and stout old Sandy Sansculotte returns home from India or 




108 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS.- 

Crimea, what a bagpiping, shouting, hurraj'ing, and self-glori- 
fication takes place round about him ! You would fanc}', to 
hear McOrator after dinner, that the Scotch had fought all the 
battles, killed all the Russians, Indian rebels, or what not. In 
Cupar-Fife, there's a little inn called the " Battle of Waterloo," 
'and what do you think the sign is ? (I sketch from memor}'', 
to be sure.)* " The Battle of Waterloo" is one broad Scotch- 
man la3'ing about him with a broadsword. Yes, 3^es, my dear 
Mac, 5'ou are wise, you are good, you are clever, you are hand- 
some, you are brave, you are rich, &c. ; but so is Jones over 
the border. Scotch salmon is good, but there are other good 
fish in the sea. I once heard a Scotchman lecture on poetrj^ in 
London. Of course the pieces he selected were chiefl}^ by 
Scottish authors, and Walter Scott was his favorite poet. I 
whispered to m}^ neighbor, who was a Scotchman (by the way, 
the audience were almost all Scotch, and the room was All- 
Mac's — I beg 3'our pardon, but I couldn't help it, I reaWy 
couldn't help it) — " The professor has said the best poet was 
a Scotchman : I wager that he will say the worst poet was a 
Scotchman, too." And sure enough that worst poet, when he 
made his appearance, was a Northern Briton. 

And as we are talking of bragging, and I am on m}^ travels, 
can I forget one mighty republic — one — two mighty republics, 
where people are notoriously fond of passing off their claret for 
port? I am very glad, for the sake of a kind friend, that there 
is a great and influential party in the United, and, I trust, in 
the Confederate States,! who believe that Catawba wine is bet- 
ter than the best Champagne. Opposite that famous old White 
House at Washington, whereof I shall ever have a grateful 
memory, they have set up an equestrian statue of General Jack- 
son, by a self-taught American artist of no inconsiderable genius 
and skill. At an evening-party a member of Congress seized 
me in a corner of the room, and asked me if I did not think 
this was the finest equestrian statue in the ivorld ? How was I to 
deal with this plain question, put to me in a corner? I was 
bound to reply, and accordingly said that I did not think it was 
the finest statue in the world. " Well, sir," says the Member 

of Congress, "but 3^ou must remember that Mr. M had 

never seen a statue when he made this ! " I suggested that to 

see other statues might do Mr. M no harm. Nor was any 

man more willing to own his defects, or more modest regarding 
his merits, than the sculptor himself, whom I met subsequently. 

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work, 
t Written in July, 1861. 



II 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 100 

But oh ! what a charming article there was in a Washington 
paper next day about the impertinence of criticism and offensi>'e 
tone of arrogance which Englishmen adopted towards men and 
works of genius in America ! " Who was this man, who " &c. 
&c. ? The Washington writer was angr}^ because I would not 
accept this American claret as the finest port- wine in the world. 
Ah me ! It is about blood and not wine that the quarrel now 
is, and who shall foretell its end? 

How much claret that would be port if it could is handed 
about in every society ! In the House of Commons what small- 
beer orators try to pass for strong ? Stay : have I a spite 
against any one ? It is a fact that the wife of the Member for 
Bungay has left off asking me and Mrs. Roundabout to her 
evening-parties. Now is the time to have a slap at him. I 
will say that he was always overrated, and that now he is 
lamentably falling off even from what he has been. I will back 
the Member for Stoke Poges against him ; and show that the 
dashing young Member for Ishngton is a far sounder man than 
either. Have I any little literary animosities ? Of course not. 
Men of letters never have. Otherwise, how I could serve out a 
competitor here, make a face over his works, and show that this 
W^ould-be port is ver}'' meagre ordinaire indeed ! Nonsense, 
man ! Wh}^ so squeamish ? Do they spare you I Now 3'Ou 
have the whip in j^our hand, won't you lay on? You used to 
be a pretty whip enough as a young man, and liked it too. Is 
there no enemy who would be the better for a little thonging? 
No. I have militated in former times, not without glory ; but 
I grow peaceable as I grow old. And if I have a literary 
enemj^, why, he will probabl}^ write a book ere long, and then it 
will be his turn, and my favorite review will be down upon 
him. 

My brethren, these sermons are professedly short ; for I 
liave that opinion of m}^ dear congregation, which leads me to 
think that were I to preach at great length they would yawn, 
stamp, make noises, and perhaps go straightway out of church ; 
and yet with this text I protest I could go on for hours. What 
multitudes of men, what multitudes of women, my dears, pass 
off their ordinaire for port, their small beer for strong! In 
literature, in politics, in the army, the navy, the church, at the 
bar, in the world, what an immense quantity of cheap liquor is 
made to do service for better sorts ! Ask Serjeant Roland his 
opinion of Oliver Q.C. " Ordinaire, my good fellow, ordinaire, 
with a port- wine label ! " Ask Oliver his opinion of Roland. 
" Never was a man so overrated by the world and by himself." 



110 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Ask Tweedledum ski his opinion of Tweedledeestein's perform- 
ance. " A quack, m}- tear sir! an ignoramus, I geef you m}^ 
vort ? He gombose an opera ! He is not fit to make dance a 
bear ! " Ask Paddington and Buckminster, those two " swells " 
of fashion, what the}' think of each other? They are notorious 
ordinaire. You and I remember when thfey passed for ver}' 
small wine, and now how high and mighty ihej have become. 
What do you sa}" to Tomkins's sermons ? Ordinaire, trying to 
go down as orthodox port, and very meagre ordinaire too ! To 
Hopkins's historical works ? — to Pumkins's poetry ? Ordinaire, 
ordinaire again — thin, feeble, overrated ; and so down the 
whole hst. And when we have done discussing our men friends, 
have we not all the women? Do these not advance absurd pre- 
tensions ? Do these never give themselves airs ? With feeble 
brains, don't thej' often set up to be esprits forts? Don't they 
pretend to be women of fashion, and cut their betters? Don't 
the}^ try and pass off their ordinarj'-looking girls as beauties of 
the first order? Every man in his circle knows women who 
give themselves airs, and to whom we can appl}- the port-wine 
simile. 

Come, my friends. Here is enough of ordinaire and port 
for to-day. My bottle has run out. Will anybody have an}' 
more? Let us go up stairs, and get a cup of tea from the 
ladies. 



OGRES. 



I DARE say the reader has remarked that the upright and in- 
dependent vowel, which stands in the vowel-list between E and 
O, has formed the subject of the main part of these essays. 
How does that vowel feel this morning? — fresh, good-humored, 
and lively? The Roundabout lines, which fall from this pen, 
are correspondingly brisk and cheerful. Has anything, on the 
contrary, disagreed with the vowel? Has its rest been dis- 
turbed, or was yesterday's dinner too good, or yesterday's wine 
not good enough? Under such circumstances, a darkling, mis- 
anthropic tinge, no doubt, is cast upon the paper. The jokes, 
if attempted, are elaborate and dreary. The bitter temper 
breaks out. That sneering manner is adopted, which you know, 
and which exhibits itself so especially when the writer is speak- 
ing about women. A moody carelessness comes over him. He 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. llj 

sees no good in anybody or thing : and treats gentlemen, ladies, 
history, and things in general, with a like gloomy flippancy! 
Agreed. When the vowel in question is in that mood, if you 
like airy gayety and tender gushing benevolence — if you want 
to be satisfied with yourself and the rest of j-our fellow-beings ; 
I recommend you, my dear creature, to go to some other shop 
in Cornhill, or turn to some other article. There are moods in 
the mind of the vowel of which we are speaking, when it is ill- 
conditioned and captious. Who always keeps good health, and 
good humor? Do not philosophers grumble? Are not sages 
sometimes out of temper? and do not angel-women go off in 
tantrums ? To-day my mood is dark. I scowl as I dip my pen 
in the inkstand. 

Here is the day come round — for everything here is done 
with the utmost regularity : — intellectual labor, sixteen hours ; 
meals, thirty-two minutes ; exercise, a hundred and forty-eight 
minutes ; conversation with the family, chiefly literary, and 
about the housekeeping, one hour and four minutes ; sleep, 
three hours and fifteen minutes (at the end of the month, when 
the Magazine is complete, I own I take eight minutes more) ; 
and the rest for the toilette and the world. Well, I say, the 
Roundabout Paper Day being come, and the subject long since 
settled in m}^ mind, an excellent subject — a most telling, livety, 
and popular subject — I go to breakfast determined to finish 
that meal in 9| minutes, as usual, and then retire to my desk 
and work, when — oh, provoking ! — here in the paper is the 
very subject treated, on which I was going to write ! Yester- 
day another paper which I saw treated it — and of course, as 
I need not tell you, spoiled it. Last Saturda}^, another paper 
had an article on the subject ; perhaps you may guess what it 
was — but I won't tell you. Onl}^ this is true, my favorite 
subject, which was about to make the best paper we have had 
for a long time : my bird, my game that I was going to shoot 
and serve up with such a delicate sauce, has been found by 
other sportsmen ; and pop, pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have 
banged at it, mangled it, and brought it down. 

" And can't yoM take some other text? " say 3^ou. All this 
is might}^ well. But if you have set 3-our heart on a certain 
dish for dinner, be it cold boiled veal, or what 3'ou will, and 
they bring 3'ou turtle and venison, don't 3^ou feel disappointed? 
During your walk 3'OU have been making up your mind that 
that cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be a very suf- 
ficient dinner : you have accustomed your thoughts to it ; and 
here, in place of it, is a turkey, surrounded by coarse sausages, 



112 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



or a reeking pigeon-pie or a fulsome roast-pig. I have known 
man}^ a good and kind man made furiously angry by such a 
contretemps. I have known him lose his temper, call his wife 
and servants names, and a whole household made miserable. 
If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is too dangerous to balk 
a man about his dinner, how much more about his article ? I 
came to my meal with an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee, 
faw, fum ! Wife, where is that tender little Princekin? Have 
30U trussed him, and did 3''ou stuff him nicel}', and have 3'ou 
taken care to baste him and do him, not too brown, as I told 
you ? Quick ! I am hungry ! I begin to whet m}- knife, to 
roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest like a 
gorilla ; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little 
princes have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making 
the paste to bake them in ! I pause in the description. I won't 
condescend to report the bad language, which you know must 
ensue, when an ogre, whose mind is ill regulated, and whose 
habits of self-indulgence are notorious, finds himself disap- 
pointed of his greed}" hopes. What treatment of his wife, what 
abuse and brutal behavior to his children, who, though ogril- 
lons, are children ! My dears, you ma}" fancy, and need not 
ask my delicate pen to describe, the language and behavior of 
a vulgar, coarse, greedy, large man with an immense mouth 
and teeth, which are too frequently employed in the gobbling 
and crunching of raw man's meat. 

And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my 
present subject, which is. Ogres. You fancy they are dead or 
only fictitious characters — mythical representatiA^es of strength, 
cruelty, stupidity, and lust for blood ? Though they had seven- 
leagued boots, you remember all sorts of little whipping-snap- 
ping Tom Thumbs used to elude and outrun them. They were 
so stupid that they gave into the most shallow ambuscades and 
artifices : witness that w"ell-known ogi*e, who, because Jack cut 
open the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open his own stupid 
waistcoat and interior. They were cruel, brutal, disgusting, 
with their sharpened teeth, immense knives, and roaring voices ! 
but they always ended by being overcome by little Tom Thumb- 
kins, or some other smart little champion. 

Yes ; they were conquered in the end there is no doubt. 
They plunged headlong (and uttering the most frightful bad 
language) into some pit where Jack came with his smart couteau 
de chasse and whipped their brutal heads off. They would be 
going to devour maidens, 



ni 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 113 

" But ever when it seemed 

Their need was at the sorest, 
A knight, in armor bright, 

Came riding through the forest.*' 

And down, after a combat, would go the brutal persecutor, with 
a lance through his midriff. Yes, I say, this is very true and 
well. But you remember that round the ogre's cave the gi'ound 
was covered, for hundreds and hundreds of yards, with the bones 
of the victims whom he had lured into the castle. Many knio-hts 
and maids came to him and perished under his knife and te*eth. 
Were dragons the same as ogres ? monsters dwelling in caverns, 
whence they rushed, attired in plate armor, wielding pikes and 
torches, and destroying stray passengers who passed by their 
lair? Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as they 
were, doubtless they ended by being overcome. But, before 
they were destroyed, they did a deal of mischief. The bones 
round their caves were countless. They had sent many brave 
souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling out of their rascal 
carcasses, to the same place of gloom. 

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, 
champions, distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres, have 
ceased to exist. It may not be ogreahle to them (pardon the 
horrible pleasantry, but as I am writing in the solitude of my 
chamber, I am grinding my teeth — yelling, roaring, and curs- 
ing — brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and as it were, 
have become an ogre) . I say there is no greater mistake than 
to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. We all know ogres. 
Their caverns are round us, and about us. There are the cas- 
tles of several ogres within a mile of the spot where I write. 
I think some of them suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not : 
but I know they are. I visit them. I don't mean to say that 
they take a cold roast prince out of the cupboard, and have a 
cannibal feast before me. But I see the bones lying about the 
roads to their houses, and in the areas and gardens. Polite- 
ness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks ; but I 
know them well enough. One of the ways to know 'em is to 
watch the scared looks of the ogres' wives and children. They 
lead an awful life. They are present at dreadful cruelties. In 
their excesses those ogres will stab about, and kill not only 
strangers who happen to call in and ask a night's lodging, but 
they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own kin. We all 
know ogres, I say, and liave been in their dens often. It is 
not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer their 
guests the peculiar dish which they like. They cannot always 

8 



il4 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

get a Tom Thumb family. The}^ eat mutton and beef too ; and 
I dare say even go out to tea, and invite you to drink it. But I 
tell you there are numbers of them going about in the world. 
And now you have my word for it, and this Uttle hint, it is quite 
curious what an interest society may be made to have for you, 
by 3'our determining to find out the ogres you meet there. 

AVhat does the man mean? says Mrs. Downright, to whom 
a joke is a very grave thing. I mean, madam, that in the com- 
pany assembled in your genteel drawing-room, who bow here 
and there and smirk in white neck-cloths, you receive men who 
elbow through life successfully enough, but who are ogres in 
private : men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering ; cruel hectors 
at home, smiling courtiers abroad ; causing wives, children, 
servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and bow- 
ing as they bid strangers welcome into their castles. I say, 
there are men who have crunched the bones of victim after vic- 
tim ; in whose closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. 
When these ogres come out into the world, you don't suppose 
they show their knives, and their great teeth? A neat simple 
white neck-cloth, a merry rather obsequious manner, a cadaver- 
ous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful grin; 
but I know ogres very considerabl}- respected : and when you 
hint to such and such a man, " My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom 
you appear to like, is, I assure 3^011, a most dreadful cannibal ; " 
the gentleman cries, " Oh, psha, nonsense! Dare say not so 
black as he is painted. Dare say not worse than his neighbors." 
We condone everything in this country ^private treason, false- 
hood, flatter}^, cruelt}^ at home, roguery, and double dealing. 
What ! Do you mean to say in 3'Our acquaintance you don't 
know ogres guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and 
that knowing them you don't shake hands with them ; dine with 
them at 3^our table ; and meet them at their own ? Depend upon 
it, in the time when there were real live ogres in real caverns or 
castles, gobbling up real knights and virgins, when they went 
into the world — the neighboring market-town, let us say, or 
earl's castle — though their nature and reputation were pretty 
well known, their notorious foibles were never alluded to. You 
would sa3s "What, Blundei'bore, my bo3M How do 3'oudo? 
How well and fresh you look ! What's the receipt 3'ou have for 
keeping so 3'oung and ros3' ? " And 3'our wife would softl3' ask 
after Mrs. Blunderbore and the dear children. Or it would be, 
" My dear Humguffin ! tr3^ that pork. It is home-bred, home- 
fed, and, I promise 3'ou, tender. Tell me if 3'ou think it is as good 
as yours ? John, a glass of Burgund3^ to Colonel Humguffin ! " 




ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 115 

You don't suppose there would be any unpleasant allusions to 
disagreeable home-reports regarding HumgufRn's manner of 
furnishing his larder ? I sa}' we all of us know ogres. We shake 
hands and dine with ogres. And if inconvenient moralists tell 
us we are cowards for our pains, we turn round with atu quoque, 
or say that we don't meddle with other folk's affairs ; that peo- 
ple are much less black than they are painted, and so on. What ! 
Won't half the county go to Ogreham Castle ? Won't some of 
the clergy say grace at dinner? Won't the mothers bring their 
daughters to dance with the young Rawheads ? And if Lady 
Ogreham happens to die — I won't say to go the wa}- of all 
flesh, that is too revolting — I say if Ogreham is a widower, 
do you aver, on your conscience and honor, that mothers will 
not be found to offer their young girls to supply the lamented 
lady's place ? How stale this misanthrop}^ is ! Something must 
have disagreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare 
say you would like to call another subject. Yes, mj* fine fellow ; 
ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking 
in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham ga3'ety to 
conceal thy terror, lest I should point thee out : — thou art 
prosperous and honored, art thou? I say thou hast been a 
tyrant and a robber. Thou hast plundered the poor. Thou 
hast bullied the weak. Thou hast laid violent hands on the 
goods of the innocent and confiding. Thou hast made a prey 
of the meek and gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou 
hast been hard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, 
monster ! Ah, when shall little Jack come and drill daylight 
through thy wicked cannibal carcass? I see the ogre pass on, 
bowing right and left to the compan}- ; and he gives a dreadful 
sidelong glance of suspicion as he is talking to my lord bishop 
in the corner there. 

Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In former times, 
and in children's books, where it is necessary to paint your 
moral in such large letters that there can be no mistake about 
it, ogres are made with that enormous mouth and ratelier which 
you know of, and with which they can swallow down a baby, 
almost without using that great knife which they always carry. 
They are too cunning now-a-days. They go about in society, 
slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no especially great 
appetite. In my own young days there used to be play ogres 
— men who would devour a young fellow in one sitting, and 
leave him without a bit of flesh on his bones. They were quiet 
gentlemanlike-looking people. They got the young fellow into 
their cave. Champagne, pate-de-foie-gras, and numberless 




116 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

• 

good things, were handed about ; and then, having eaten, the 
3'oung man was devoured in his turn. I believe these card and 
dice ogres have died away almost as entirely as the hasty-pud- 
ding giants whom Tom Thumb overcame. Now, there are 
ogres in City courts who lure you into their dens. About our 
Cornish mines I am told there are man}^ most plausible ogres, 
who tempt 3'ou into their caverns and pick j^our bones there. 
In a certain newspaper there used to be latel}- a whole column 
of advertisements from ogres who would put on the most plausi- 
ble, nay, piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their victims. 
You would read, " A tradesman, established for seventy 3^ears 
in the City, and known, and much respected by Messrs. N. M. 
Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has pressing need for three 
pounds until next Saturda}^ He can give security for half a 
million, and fort}- thousand pounds will be given for the use of 
the loan," and so on; or, "An influential body of capitalists 
are about to establish a company, of which the business will 
be enormous and the profits proportionately prodigious. They 
will require a secretary, of good address and appearance, at 
a salar}' of two thousand per annum. He need not be able to 
write, but address and manners are absolutely necessary. As 
a mark of confidence in the compan}^, he will have to deposit," 
&c. ; or, "A young widow (of pleasing manners and appear- 
ance) who has a pressing necessit}' for four pounds ten for three 
weeks, offers her Erard's grand piano, valued at three hundred 
guineas ; a diamond cross of eight hundred pounds ; and board 
and lodging in her elegant villa near Banbury Cross, with the 
best references and societ}', in return for the loan." I suspect 
the. people are ogres. There are ogres and ogres. Pol3'phe- 
mus was a great, tall, one-eyed, notorious ogre, fetching his 
victims out of a hole, and gobbling them one after another. 
There could be no mistake about him. But so were the Sirens 
ogres — prett}' blue-e3'ed things, peeping at 3''0u coaxingl3^ from 
out of the water, and singing their melodious wheedles. And 
the bones round their caves were more numerous than the ribs, 
skulls, and thigh-bones round the cavern of hulking Pol3'pheme. 
To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the 
dapper champion of the pen ; puflfe boldh' upon the horn which 
hangs by the chain ; enters the hall resolutel3^, and challenges 
the big t3Tant sulking within. We def)^ him to combat, the 
enormous roaring ruffian ! We give him a meeting on the green 
plain before his castle . Green ? No wonder it should be green : 
it is manured with human bones. After a few graceful wheels 
and cuiTets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 117 

*Tis but to kiss the locket of our lady-love's hair. And now 
the vizor is up : the lance is in rest (Gillott's iron is the point 
for me). A touch of the spur in the gallant sides of Pegasus, 
and Ave gallop at the great brute. 

'' Cut of!' his ugl}' head, Flibberty gibbet, my squire ! " And 
who are these who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned 
maidens, the maltreated widows, the poor old hoar}^ grand- 
fathers, who have been locked up in the dungeons these scores 
and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny of that ruffian ! 
Ah ye knights of the i^en ! May honor be your shield, and 
truth tip your lances ! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be 
modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for the 
Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him. 



ON TWO EOUNDABOUT PAPEES WHICH I 
INTENDED TO WRITE.* 

We have all heard of a place paved with good intentions : — 
a place which I take to be a very dismal, useless, and unsatis- 
factory terminus for man}^ pleasant thoughts, kindl}- fancies, 
gentle wishes, meny little quips and pranks, harmless jokes 
which die as it were the moment of their birth. Poor little 
children of the brain ! He was a drear}^ theologian who hud- 
dled 3"OU under such a melanchoty cenotaph, and laid 3'ou in the 
vaults under the flagstones of Hades ! I trust that some of the 
best actions we have all of us committed in our lives have been 
committed in fanc}^ It is not all wickedness we are thinking, 
que diahle! Some of our thoughts are bad enough I grant 3'ou. 
Many a one you and I have had here below. Ah merc}^ what 
a monster ! what crooked horns ! what leering eyes ! what 
a flaming mouth ! what cloven feet, and what a hideous writh- 
ing tail ! Oh, let us fall down on our knees, repeat our most 
potent exorcisms, and overcome the brute. Spread 3- our black 
pinions, fly — fly to the dusky realms of Eblis, and bury th3'- 
self under the paving-stones of his hall, dark genie! But 
all thoughts are not so. No — no. There are the pure : there 

* The following paper was written in 1861, after the extraordinary 
affray between Major Murray and the money-lender in a house in Nor- 
thumberland Street, Strand, and subsequent to the appearance of M. Du 
Chaillu's book on Gorillas. 



118 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

are the kind : there are the gentle. There are sweet unspoken 
thanks before a fair scene of nature : at a sun-setting below a 
glorious sea : or a moon and a host of stars shining over it : at 
a bunch of children playing in the street, or a group of flowers 
by the hedge-side, or a bird singing there. At a hundred mo- 
ments or occurrences of the day good thoughts pass through 
the mind, let us trust, which never are spoken ; prayers are 
made which never are said ; and Te Deura is sung without 
church, clerk, choristers, parson, or organ. Why, there's m}- 
enem}' : who got the place I wanted ; who maligned me to the 
woman I wanted to be well with ; who supplanted me in the 
good graces of my patron. I don't say anything about the mat- 
ter : but, my poor old enem}'^, in my secret mind I have move- 
ments of as tender charity towards you, 3'ou old scoundrel, as 
ever I had when we were bo3's together at school. You ruffian ! 
do you fancy I forget that we were fond of each other ? We 
are still. We share our toff}' ; go halves at the tuck-shop ; do 
each other's exercises ; prompt each other with the word in 
construing or repetition ; and tell the most frightful fibs to 
prevent each other from being found out. We meet each 
other in public. Ware a fight ! Get them into different parts 
of the room ! Our friends hustle round us. Capulet and Mon- 
tague are not more at odds than the houses of Roundabout and 
Wrightabout, let us say. It is, "My dear Mrs. Buffer, do 
kindly put yourself in the chair between those two men ! " Or, 
"My dear Wrightabout, will you take that charming Lady 
Blancmange down to supper? She adores 3^our poems, and 
gave five shillings for 3'our autograph at the fanc}'^ fair." In 
like manner the peacemakers gather round Roundabout on his 
part ; he is carried to a distant corner, and coaxed out of the 
wa3'^ of the enem3^ with whom he is at feud. 

When we meet in the Square at Verona, out flash rapiers, 
and we fall to. But in his private mind T3'balt owns that 
Mercutio has a rare wit, and Mercutio is sure that his adversar3' 
is a gallant gentleman. Look at the amphitheatre 3'onder. You 
do not suppose those gladiators who fought and perished, as 
hundreds of spectators in that grim Circus held thumbs down, 
and cried, " Kill, kill ! " — 3^ou do not suppose the combatants 
of necessit3" hated each other ? No more than the celebrated 
trained bands of literar}' sword -and-buckler men hate the ad- 
versaries whom the3" meet in the arena. The3" engage at the 
given signal ; feint and parr3^ ; slash, poke, rip each other 
open, dismember limbs, and hew ofl* noses : but in the way of 
business, and, I trust, with mutual private esteem. For in- 



HOUKDABOUT PAPERS. Il9 

stance, I salute the warriors of the Superfine Company with the 
honors due among warriors. Here's at you, Spartacus, my lad 
A hit, I acknowledge. A palpable hit! Ha! how do you 
like that poke in the eye in return ? When the trumpets sino- 
truce, or the spectators are tired, we bow to the noble compau}-^ 
withdraw ; and get a cool glass of wine in our rendezvous des 
braves gladiateurs. 

By the way, I saw that amphitheatre of Verona under the 
strange Ught of a lurid echpse some years ago : and I have 
been there in spirit for these twenty lines past, under a vast 
gusty awning, now with twenty thousand fellow-citizens looking 
on from the benches, now in the circus itself, a grim gladiator 
with sword and net, or a meek mart^T — was I ? — brought out 
to be gobbled up by the lions ? or a huge, shaggy, tawny lion 
myself, on whom the dogs were going to be set? What a day 
3f excitement I have had to be sure ! But I must get away 
from Verona, or who knows how much farther the Roundabout 
Pegasus may carry me ? 

We were saying, my Muse, before we dropped and perched 
)n earth for a couple of sentences, that our unsaid words were 
n some Umbo or other, as real as those we have uttered ; that 
ihe thoughts which have passed through our brains are as 
ictual as any to which our tongues and pens have given cur- 
•ency. For instance, besides what is here hinted at, I have 
Jiought ever so much more about Verona : about an early 
Christian church I saw there ; about a great dish of rice we 
lad at the inn ; about the bugs there ; about ever so man}'' 
nore details of that daj^'s journey from Milan to Venice ; about 
liake Garda, which la}^ on the wa}^ from Milan, and so forth. 
' say what fine things we have thought of, haven't we, all of us? 
^h, what a fine tragedy that was I thought of, and never wrote ! 
)n the day of the dinner of the Oj^stermongers' Companj^, what 
I noble speech I thought of in the cab, and broke down — I 
lon't mean the cab, but the speech. Ah, if j^ou could but read 
lome of the unwritten Roundabout Papers, how you would be 
imused ! Aha! m}^ friend, I catch j^ou saying, " Well, then, 
^ wish this was unwritten with all m}^ heart." Ver}^ good. I 
)we 3-0U one. I do confess a hit, a palpable hit. 

One day in the past month, as I was reclining on the bench 
)f thought, witli that ocean The Times newspaper spread before 
ne, tlie ocean cast up on the shore at my feet two famous sub- 
ects for Roundabout Papers, and I picked up those waifs, and 
ireasured them away until I could polish them and bring them 
io market. That scheme is not to be carried out. I can't 



120 HOUNDABOUt PAPERS. 

write about those subjects. And though I cannot write about 
them, I ma}^ surely tell what are the subjects I am going not to 
write about. 

The first was that Northumberland Street encounter, which 
all the papers have narrated. Have any novelists of our daj^s 
a scene and catastrophe more strange and terrible than this 
which occurs at noonda}' within a few ^'ards of the greatest 
thoroughfare in Europe? At the theatres they have a new 
name for their melodramatic pieces, and call them " Sensation 
Dramas." What a sensation Drama this is ! What have 
people been flocking to see at the Adelphi Theatre for the last 
hundred and fifty nights? A woman pitched overboard out of 
a boat, and a certain Miles taking a tremendous " header," 
and bringing her to shore? Bagatelle! What is this com- 
pared to the real life-drama, of which a midday representation 
takes place just opposite the Adelphi in Northumberland Street? 
The brave Dumas, the intrepid Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene 
Sue, the cold-shudder-inspiring " Woman in White," the as- 
tounding author of the " M^'steries of the Court of London," 
never invented anything more tremendous than this. It might 
have happened to you and me. We want to borrow a little 
mone3\ We are directed to an agent. We propose a pe- 
cuniary transaction at a short date. He goes into the next 
room, as we fanc}^, to get the bank-notes, and returns with 
*' two very prett}^, dehcate little ivorj'-handled pistols," and 
blows a portion of our heads oflT. After this, what is the use 
of being squeamish about the probabilities and possibilities in 
the writing of fiction ? Years ago I reirifember making merry 
over a play of Dumas, called Kean^ in which the "Coal-Hole 
Tavern " was represented on the Thames, with a fleet of pirate- 
ships moored alongside. Pirate-ships? Why not? What a 
cavern of terror was this in Northumberland Street, with its 
splendid furniture covered with dust, its empty bottles, in the 
midst of which sits a grim " agent," amusing himself by firing 
pistols, aiming at the unconscious mantel-piece, or at the heads 
of his customers ! 

After this, what is not possible? It is possible Hungerford 
Market is mined, and will explode some da}'. Mind how 3'ou 
go in for a penu}' ice unawares. " Pra}', step this way," says 
a quiet person at the door. You enter — into a back room : — 
a quiet room : rather a dark room. " Pray, take your place 
in a chair." And she goes to fetch the pennj' ice. Malheureiu ! 
The chair sinks down with 3'ou — sinks, and sinks, and sinks 
— a large wet flannel suddenU' envelopes your face and throt- 






ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 121 

ties you. Need we say any more? After Northumberland 
Street, what is improbable? Surely there is no difficult}' in 
crediting Bluebeard. I withdraw my last month's opinions about 
ogres. Ogres? Why not? I protest I have seldom contem- 
plated anything more terribly ludicrous than this "agent" in 
the dingy splendor of his clen, surrounded by dusty ormolu 
and piles of empty bottles, firing pistols for his diversion at 
the mantel-piece until his clients come in ! Is pistol-practice 
so common in Northumberland Street, that it passes without 
notice hi the lodging-houses there ? 

We spake anon of good thoughts. About bad thoughts? 
Is there some Northumberland Street chamber in vour heart 
and mine, friend : close to the every-day street of life : visited 
by daily friends: visited by people on business; in which 
affairs are transacted ; jokes are uttered ; wine is drunk ; 
through which people come and go ; wives and children pass ; 
and in which murder sits unseen until the terrible moment when 
he rises up and kills? A farmer, say, has a gun over the 
mantel-piece in his room where he sits at his dail}' meals and 
rest: caressing his children, joking with his friends, smoking 
his pipe in his calm. One night the gun is taken down: the 
farmer goes out : and it^gis a murderer who comes back and 
puts the piece up and drinks by that fireside. Was he a mur- 
derer yesterda}' when he was tossing the baby on his knee, 
and when his hands were playing with his little girl's yellow 
hair? Yesterday there was no blood on them at all: they 
were shaken by honest men : have done many a kind act in 
their time ver}' likely. He. leans his head on one of them, the 
wife comes in with her anxious looks of welcome, the children 
are prattling as they did yesterday round the father's knee at 
the fire, and Cain is sitting by the embers, and Abel lies dead 
on the moor. Think of the gulf between now and yesterday. 
Oh, yesterday ! Oh, the days when those two loved each other 
and said their prayers side by side ! He goes to sleep, per- 
haps, and dreams that his brother is alive. Be true, O dream ! 
Let him live in dreams, and wake no more. Be undone, O 
crime, O crime ! But the sun rises : and the officers of con- 
science come : and yonder lies the body on the moor. I hap- 
pened to pass, and looked at the Northumberland Street house 
the other day. A few loiterers were gazing up at the dingy 
windows. A plain ordinary face of a house enough — and in 
a chamber in it one man suddenly rose up, pistol in hand, to 
slaughter another. HaA^e you ever killed any one in your 
thoughts? Has your heart compassed any man's death? In 



122 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



1 



your mind, have j^ou ever taken a brand from the altar, and 
slain your brother? How many plain ordinary faces of men 
do we look at, unknowing of murder behind those ej^es ? Luck}- 
for 3'ou and me, brother, that we have good thoughts unspoken. 
But the bad ones? I tell 3'ou that the sight of those blank 
windows in Northumberland Street — through which, as it 
were, m}' mind could picture the awful traged}' glimmering 
l^ehind — set me thinking, "Mr. Street-Preacher, here is a 
text for one of your pavement sermons. But it is too glum 
and serious. You eschew dark thoughts : and desire to be 
cheerful and merry in the main." And, such being the case, 
you see we must have no Roundabout Essay on this subject. 

Well, I had another arrow in my quiver. (So, 3'ou know, 
had William Tell a bolt for his son, the apple of his eye ; and 
a shaft for Gessler, in case Wilham came to any trouble with 
the first poor little target.) And this, I must tell you, was 
to have been a rare Roundabout performance — one of the very 
best that has ever appeared in this series. It was to have 
contained all the deep pathos of Addison ; the logical precision 
of Rabelais ; the childlike playfulness of Swift ; the manly 
stoicism of Sterne ; the metaphysical depth of Goldsmith ; the 
blushing modesty of Fielding ; the ||)igi'ammatic terseness of 
Walter Scott ; the uproarious humor of Sam Richardson ; and 
the gay simplicit}' of Sam Johnson ; — it was to have combined 
all these qualities, with some excellences of modern writers 
whom I could name : — but circumstances have occurred which 
have rendered this Roundabout Essay also impossible. 

I have not the least objection to tell 3'ou what was to have 
been the subject of that other admirable Roundabout Paper. 
Gracious powers ! the Dean of St. Patrick's never had a better 
theme. The paper was to have been on the Gorillas, to be 
sure. I was going to imagine myself to be a young surgeon- 
apprentice from Charleston, in South Carolina, who ran away 
to Cuba on account of unhappy family circumstances, with 
which nobody has the least concern ; who sailed thence to 
Africa in a large, roomy schooner with an extraordinary vacant 
space between decks. I was subject to dreadful ill treatment 
from the first mate of the ship, who, when I found she was a 
slaver, altogether de 4ined to put me on shore. I was chased 
— we were chased - l)y three British frigates and a seventy- 
four, which we enga ^ad and captured ; but were obliged to 
scuttle and sink, ns >ve could sell them in no African port: 
and I never sIimU forget the look of manly resignation, com- 
bined with considerable disgust, of the British Admiral as he 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 123 

wafkecl the plank, after cutting off his pigtail, which he handed 
to me, and which I still have iu charge for his faniil3- ^^ Boston, 
Lincohishire, England. 

We made the port of Bpoopoo, at the confluence of the 
Bungo and Sgglolo rivers (which you may see in ISwammer- 
dahl's map) on the 31st April last year. Our passage had 
been so extraordinarily rapid, owing to the continued drunken- 
ness of the captain and chief officers, b}' which I was oblioed 
to work the ship and take her in command, that we reached 
Bpoopoo six weeks before we were expected, and five before 
the coffres from the interior and from the great slave depot at 
Zbabblo were expected. Their delay caused us not a little 
discomfort, because, though we had taken the four English 
ships, we knew that Sir Byam Martin's iron-cased squadron, 
with the " Warrior," the " Impregnable," the " Sanconiathon," 
and the " Berosus," were cruising in the neighborhood, and 
might prove too much for us. 

It not only became necessary to quit Bpoopoo before the 
arrival of the British fleet or the rainy season, but to get our 
people on board as soon as might be. While the chief mate, 
with a detachment of seamen, hurried forward to the Pgogo 
lake, where we expected a considerable part of our cargo, the 
second mate, with six men, four chiefs. King Fbumbo, an Obi 
man, and m3'self, went N.W. by W., towards King Mtoby's- 
town, where we knew man}' hundreds of our between-deck 
passengers were to be got together. We went down the Pdodo 
river, shooting snipes, ostriches, and rhinoceros in plenty, and 
I think a few elephants, until, by the advice of a guide, who 
I now believe was treacherous, we were induced to leave the 
Pdodo, and march N.E. by N.N. Here Lieutenant Larkins, 
who had persisted in drinking rum from morning to night, and 
thmshing me in his sober moments during the whole journey, 
died, and I have too good reason to know was eaten with much 
relish by the natives. At Mgoo, where there are barracoons 
and a depot for our cargo, we had no news of our expected 
freight ; accordingl}', as time pressed exceedingly, parties were 
despatched in advance towards the great Washaboo lake, bj^ 
which the caravans usualh'^ come towards the coast. Here we 
found no caravan, but onl^^ four negrof down with the ague, 
whom I treated, I am bound to say, u'^successfully, whilst we 
waited for our friends. We used to '^(ike watch and watch in 
front of the place, both to guard ourselves from attack, and 
get earl}^ news of the approaching caravan. 

At last, on the 23rd September, as I was in advance with 



124 ROUNDi^BOUT PAPERS. 



I 



Charles Rogers, second mate, and two natives with bows and 
arrows, we were crossing a great plain skirted by a forest, when 
we saw emerging from a ravine what I took to be three ne- 
groes — a very tall one, one of a moderate size, and one quite 
little. 

Our native guide shrieked out some words in their language, 
of which Charles Rogers knew something. 1 thought it was 
the advance of the negroes whom we expected. " No ! " said 
Rogers (who swore dreadfull}' in conversation), "it is the 
Gorillas ! " And he fired both barrels of his gun, bringing 
down the little one first, and the female afterwards. 

The male, who was untouched, gave a howl that you might 
have heard a league off; advanced towards us as if he would 
attack us, and then turned and ran away with inconceivable 
celerit}' towards the wood. 

We went up towards the fallen brutes. The little one by 
the female appeared to be about two 3'ears old. It lay bleat- 
ing and moaning on the gTOund, stretching out its little hands, 
with movements and looks so strangely resembling human, that 
m}' heart sickened with pit}'. The female, who had been shot 
through both legs, could not move. She howled most hide- 
ously when I approached the little one. 

" We must be off," said Rogers, " or the whole Gorilla race 
may be down upon us." "The little one is onl}' shot in the 
leg," I said. " I'll bind the limb up, and we will carr^* the beast 
with us on board." 

The poor little wretch held up its leg to show it was wounded, 
and looked to me with appealing ej'es. It la}' quite still whilst 
I looked for and found the bullet, and, tearing off a piece of 
my shirt, bandaged up the wound. I was so occupied in this 
business, that I hardly heard Rogers cry "Run! run!" and 
when I looked up — 

When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I ever 
heard — a roar ? ten thousand roars — a whirling arm}' of dark 
beings rushed by me. Rogers, who had bullied me so fright- 
fuU}' during the vo3'age, and who had encouraged m}' fatal 
passion for pla}-, so that I own I owed him 1,500 dollars, was 
overtaken, felled, brained, and torn into ten thousand pieces ; 
and I dare sa}' the same fate would have fallen on me, but that 
the little Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms 
round my neck (their Urms, 3'ou know, are much longer than 
ours). And when an immense gra}' Gorilla, with hardly any 
teeth, brandishing the trunk of a goll^'boshtree about sixteen | 
feet long, came up to me roaring, the little one squeaked out 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 125 

something plaintive, which, of course, I could not understand ; 
on which suddenl}- the monster flung down his tree, squatted 
down on his huge hams by the side of the little patient, and 
began to bellow and weep. 

And now, do you see whom I had rescued ? I had rescued 
the young Prince of the Gorillas, who was out walking with 
his nurse and footman. The footman had run ofl^ to alann his 
master, and certainly I never saw a footman run quicker. The 
whole army of Gorillas rushed forward to rescue their prince, 
and punish his enemies. If the King Gorilla's emotion was 
great, fancy what the queen's must have been when she came 
up ! She arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with wattled 
branches, on which she lay, with her youngest child, a prince 
of three weeks old. 

My little protege with the wounded leg, still persisted in 
hugging me with its arms (I think I mentioned that they are 
longer than those of men in general), and as the poor little 
brute was immensely heavy, and the Gorillas go at a prodigious 
pace, a litter was made for us likewise ; and my thirst much 
refreshed by a footman (the same domestic who had given the 
alarm) running hand over hand up a cocoanut-tree, tearing 
the rinds off, breaking the shell on his head, and handing me 
the fresh milk in its cup. M}- little patient partook of a little, 
stretching out its dear little unwounded foot, with which, or 
with its hand, a Gorilla can help itself indiscriminatel}'. Rela3's 
of large Gorillas relieved each other at the litters at intervals of 
twent}' minutes, as I calculated by my watch, one of Jones and 
Bates's, of Boston, Mass., though I have been unable to this 
day to ascertain how these animals calculate time with such 
surprising accurac}^ We slept for that night under — 

And now, you see, we arrive at reall}' the most interesting 
part of m}^ travels in the country which I intended to visit, viz. 
the manners and habits of the Gorillas chez eux. I give the 
heads of this narrative only, the full account being suppressed 
for a reason which shall presently be given. The heads, then, 
of the chapters, are briefly as follows : — 

The author's arrival in the Gorilla country. Its geographical 
position. Lodgings assigned to him up a gum-tree. Constant 
attachment of the little prince. His royal highnesses gratitude. 
Anecdotes of his wit, playfulness, and extraordinary precocity. Am 
offered a portion of poor Larkins for my supper^ but decline with 
horror. Footman britigs me a young crocodile : fishy but very pal- 
atable. Old crocodiles too tough: ditto rhinoceros. Visit the 



126 ROWNDABOUT PAPERS. 



J 



queen mother — an enormous old Gorilla^ quite white. Prescribe 
for her majesty. Meeting of Gorillas at what appears a parliament 
amongst them : presided over by old Gorilla in cocoanut-fihre wig. 
Their sports. Their customs. A privileged class amongst them. 
Extraordinary likeness of Gorillas to people at home., both at 
Charleston, S. C, my native place; and London, England., which 
I have visited. Flat-nosed Gorillas and blue-nosed Gorillas; their 
hatred, and wars between them. In a part of the country (its geo- 
graphical position described) 1 see several negroes under Gorilla 
domination. Well treated by their masters. Frog-eating Gorillas 
across the Salt Lake. Bull-headed Gorillas — their mutual hostility . 
Green Island Gorillas. More quarrelsome than the Bull-heads, and 
howl much louder. 1 am called to attend one of the princesses. 
Evident partiality of H. R. H. for me. Jealousy and rage of large 
red-headed Gorilla. How shall I escape ? 

Ay, how indeed ? Do you wish to know ? Is your curiosity 
excited ? Well, I do know how I escaped. I could tell the most 
extraordinary adventures that happened to me. I could show 
3^ou resemblances to people at home, that would make them 

blue with rage and you crack your sides with laughter 

And what is the reason I cannot write this paper, having all the 
facts before me? The reason is, that walking down vSt. James 
Street yesterday, I met a friend who says to me, " Roundabout 
my boy, have you seen your picture ? Here it is ! " And he 
pulls out a portrait, executed in photography, of your humble 
servant, as an immense and most unpleasant-featured baboon, 
with long hairy hands, and called by the waggish artist " A 
Literary Gorilla." O horror ! And now you see why I can't 
play off this joke myself, and moralize on the fable, as it has 
been narrated already de me. 



A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 

This group of dusky children of the captivity is copied out 
of a little sketch-book which I carried in many a roundabout 
journey, and will point a moral as well as any other sketch in 
the volume. Yonder drawing * was made in a country where 
there was such hospitality, friendship, kindness shown to the 
humble designer, that his eyes do not care to look out for faults, 

~ * This refers to an illustrated edition of the work. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 127 

or his pen to note them. How they sang ; how they lauo-hed 
and grinned ; how they scraped, bowed, and complimented%oii 
and each other, those negroes of tlie cities of the Southern parts 
of the then United States ! My business kept me in the towns ; 
I was but in one negro-plantation village, and there were only 
women and little children, the men being out a-field. But there 

was plenty of cheerfulness in the huts, under the great trees 

I speak of what I saw — and amidst the dusky bondsmen of 
the cities. I witnessed a curious gayety ; heard amongst the 
black folk endless singing, shouting, and laughter ; and saw on 
holidays black gentlemen and ladies arrayed in such splendor 
and comfort as freeborn workmen in our towns seldom exhibit. 
What a grin and bow that dark gentleman performed, who was 
the porter at the colonel's, when he said, "You write 3^our 
name, mas'r, else I will forgot." I am not going into the 
slaver}^ question, T am not an advocate for "the institution," 
as I know, madam, by that angry toss of your head, you are 
about to declare me to be. For domestic purposes, m^- dear 
lady, it seemed to me about the dearest institution that can be 
devised. In a house in a Southern cit}' you will find fifteen 
negroes doing the work which John, the cook, the housemaid, 
and the help, do perfectly in your own comfortable London 
house. And these fifteen negroes are the pick of a familj' of 
some eight}^ or ninety. Twent}^ are too sick, or too old for 
work, let us say : tWent}' too clumsy : twenty are too young, 
and have to be nursed and watched by ten more.* And master 
has to maintain the immense crew to do the work of half a 
dozen willing hands. No, no ; let Mitchell, the exile from 
poor dear enslaved Ireland, wish for a gang of " fat niggers ; " 
I would as soon you should make me a present of a score of 
Bengal elephants, when I need but a single stout horse to pull 
my brougham. 

How hospitable they were, those Southern men ! In the 
North itself the welcome was not kinder, as I, who have eaten 
Northern and Southern salt, can testify. As for New Orleans, 
in spring-time, — just when the orchards were flushing over 
with peach-blossoms, and the sweet herbs came to flavor the 
juleps — it seemed to me the city of the world where you can 
eat and drink the most and suffer the least. At Bordeaux 
itself, claret is not better to drink than at New Orleans. It 

* This was an account given by a gentleman at Richmond of his estab. 
lishment. Six European servants would have kept liis house and stables 
well. " His farm," he said, " barely sufficed to maintain the negroes resid- 
ing on it." 



128 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

was all good — believe an expert Robert — from the half-dollar 
Medoc of the public hotel table, to the private gentleman's 
choicest wine. Claret is, somehow, good in that gifted place 
at dinner, at supper, and at breakfast in the morning. It 
is good : it is superabundant — and there is nothing to pa3'. 
Find me speaking ill of such a country ! When I do, pone me 
pigris campis : smother me in a desert, or let Mississippi or 
Garonne drown me ! At that comfortable tavern on Pontchar- 
train we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten 
at Marseilles : and not the least headache in the morning, I 
give 3'ou ni}' word ; on the contrary, you only wake with a 
sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water. Thej^ saj^ there 
is fever there in the autumn : but not in the spring-time, when 
the peach-blossoms blush over the orchards, and the sweet herbs 
come to flavor the juleps. 

I was bound from New Orleans to Saint Louis ; and our 
walk was constantlj' on the Levee, whence we could see a hun- 
dred of those huge white Mississippi steamers at their moorings 
in the river: "Look," said my friend Lochlomond to me, as 
we stood one da}" on the quay — ' ' look at that post ! Look 
at that coffee-house behind it ! Sir, last j'ear a steamer blew 
up in the river yonder, just where you see those men pulling off 
in the boat. By that post where you are standing a mule was 
cut in two by a fragment of the burst machiner}', and a bit of 
the chimney-stove in that first-floor window of the coffee-house,^, 
killed a negro who was cleaning knives in the top-room ! " fl 
looked at the post, at the coffee-house window, at the steamer 
in which I was going to embark, at my friend, with a pleasing 
interest not divested of melanchol3^ Yesterda}^, it was the 
mule, thinks I, who was cut in two : it ma}^ be eras mihi. Wh}', 
in the same little sketch-book, there is a drawing of an Alabama 
river steamer which blew up on the ver^^ next vo^^age after that 
in which your humble servant was on board ! Had I but waited 
another week, I might have. . . . These incidents give a queer 
zest to the voyage down the life-stream in America. When 
our huge, tall, white, pasteboard castle of a steamer began to 
work up stream, every limb in her creaked, and gi'oaned, and 
quivered, so that 3"ou might fancv" she would burst right off. 
Would she hold together, or would she split into ten miUion 
of shivers ? O my home and children ! Would 3'our humble 
servant's bod3^ be cut in two across 3"onder chain on the Levee, 
or be precipitated into 3'onder flrst-floor, so as to damage the 
chest of a black man cleaning boots at the window ? The blacki 
man is safe for me, thank goodness. But 3"ou see the little] 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 129 

accident might have happened. It has happened ; and if to a 
mule, why not to a more docile animal? On oar journey up 
the Mississippi, I give you my honor we were on fire three 
times, and burned our cook-room down. The deck at nio-ht; 
was a great firework — the chimney spouted myriads of stai-s, 
which fell blackening on our garments, sparkling on to the 
deck, or gleaming into the mighty stream through which we 
labored — the mighty 3"ellow stream with all its snags. 

How I kept up my courage through these dangers shall now 
be narrated. The excellent landlord of the "Saint Charles 
Hotel," when I was going away, begged me to accept two 
bottles of the very finest Cognac, with his compliments ; and I 
found them in my state-room with my luggage. Lochlomond 
came to see me off, and as he squeezed mj- hand at parting, 
"Roundabout," says he, "the wine mayn't be verj- good on 
board, so I have brought a dozen-case of the Medoc which you 
liked ; " and we grasped together the hands of friendship and 
farewell. Whose boat is this pulHng up to the ship? It is our 
friend Glenlivat, who gave us the dinner on Lake Pontchar- 
train. "Roundabout," says he, " we have tried to do what 
we could for you, my boy ; and it has been done de bon cceur " 
(I detect a kind tremulousness in the good fellow's voice as he 
speaks). '^Isa}' — hem! — the a — the wine isn't too good 
on board, so I've brought 3'ou a dozen of Medoc for 3'our voyage, 
you know. And God bless 3'ou ; and when I come to London 
in Ma3^ I shall come and see 3'ou. Hallo ! here's Johnson come 
to see 3'OU off,- too ! " 

As I am a miserable sinner, when Johnson grasped m3' hand, 
he said, "Mr. Roundabout, 3"0u can't be sure of the wine on 
board these steamers, so I thought I would bring 3'ou a little 
case of that light claret which 3'ou liked at m3' house." Et de 
trois ! No wonder I could face the Mississippi with so much 
courage supplied to me ! Where are 3'Ou, honest friends, who 
gave me of your kindness and your cheer? May I be consider- 
a])ly boiled, blown up, and snagged, if I speak hard words of 
3'ou. May claret turn sour ere I do ! 

Mounting the stream it chanced that we had very few pas- 
sengers. How far is the famous cit3' of Memphis from New 
Orleans? I do not mean the Egyptian Memphis, but the 
American Memphis, from which to the American Cairo we 
slowly toiled up the river — to the American Cairo at the con- 
fluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. And at Cairo we 
parted company from the boat, and from some famous and 
gifted fellow-passengers who joined us at Memphis, and whoso 



130 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

pictures we had seen in many cities of the South. I do not 
give the names of these remarkable people, unless, b}- some 
wondrous chance, in inventing a name I should hght upon that 
real one which some of them bore ;, but if 3^ou please I will say 
that our fellow-passengers whom we took in at Memphis wei;e 
no less personages than the Vermont Giant and the famous 
Bearded Lady of Kentucky and her son. Their pictures I had 
seen in many cities through which I travelled with my own little 
performance. I think the Vermont Giant was a trifle taller in 
his pictures than he was in life (being represented in the foimer 
as, at least, some two stories high) : but the lady's prodigious 
beard received no more than justice at the hands of the painter ; 
that portion of it which I saw being really most black, rich, and 
curly — I say the portion of beard, for this modest or prudent 
woman kept I don't know how much of the beard covered up 
with a red handkerchief, from which I suppose it only emerged 
when she went to bed, or when she exhibited it professionally. 

The Giant, I must think, was an overrated giant. I have 
known gentlemen, not in the profession, better made, and I 
should sa}^ taller, than the Vermont gentleman. A strange 
feeling I used to have at meals ; when, on looking round our 
little society, I saw the Giant, the Bearded Lad}^ of Kentuckj^ 
the little Bearded Boy of three years old, the Captain, (this I 
think ; but at this distance of time I would not like to make 
the statement on affidavit,) and the three other passengers, all 
with their knives in their mouths making play at the dinner — a 
strange feehng I say it was, and as though I was in a castle of 
ogres. But, after all, why so squeamish? A few scores of 
3'ears back, the finest gentlemen and ladies of Europe did the 
like. Belinda ate with her knife ; and Saccharissa had onl}' 
that weapon, or a two-pronged fork, or a spoon, for her pease. 
Have you ever looked at Gilray's print of the Prince of Wales, 
a languid voluptuary, retiring after his meal, and noted the 
toothpick which he uses ? . . . You are right, madam; I own 
that the subject is revolting and terrible. I will not pursue it. 
Only — allow that a gentleman, in a shak}' steamboat, on a 
dangerous river, in a far-off countr}^, which caught fire three 
times during the voyage — (of course I mean the steamboat, 
not the country,) — seeing a giant, a voracious supercargo, a 
bearded lad}', and a little boy, not three 3'ears of age, with a 
chin already quite black and curly, all plying their victuals 
down their throats with their knives — allow, madam, that in 
such a compan}^ a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I 
don't know whether you have ever remarked the Indian jugglers 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 131 

swallowing their knives, or seen, as I have, a whole table of 
people performing the same trick, but if 3^011 look at their eyes 
when they do it, I assure you there is a roll in them which is 
dreadful. 

Apart from this usage, which they practise in common with 
many thousand most estimable citizens, the Vermont gentle- 
man, and the Kentucky whiskered ladj^ — or did I say the re- 
verse? — whichever you like, my dear sir — were quite quiet, 
modest, unassuming people. She sat working with her needle, 
if I remember right. He, I suppose, slept in the great cabin, 
which was seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to 
say,, did I hear in the night any snores or roar's, such as you 
would fancy ought to accompany the sleep of ogres. Nay, this 
giant had quite a small appetite, (unless, to be sure, he went 
forward and ate a sheep or two in private with his horrid knife 
— oh, the dreadful thought ! — but in public, I say, he had 
quite a delicate appetite,) and was also a tea-totaler. I don't 
remember to have heard the lady's voice, though I might, not 
unnaturally, have been curious to hear it. Was her voice a 
deep, rich, magnificent bass; or was it soft, fluty, and mild? 
I shall never know now. Even if she comes to this country, I 
shall never go and see her. I have seen her, and for nothing. 

You would have fancied that, as after all we were only some 
half-dozen on board, she might have dispensed with her red 
handkerchief, and talked, and eaten her dinner in comfort : but 
in covering her chin there was a kind of modesty. That beard 
was her profession : that beard brought the public to see her : 
out of her business she wished to put that beard aside as it 
were : as a barrister would wish to put off his wig. I know 
some who carry theirs into private life, and who mistake you and 
me for jury-boxes when they address us : but these are not your 
modest barristers, not \o\xv true gentlemen. 

Well, I own I respected the lady for the modesty with which, 
her public business over, she retired into private life. She 
respected her life, and her beard. That beard having done its 
day's work, she puts it away in her handkerchief; and becomes, 
as far as in her lies, a private ordinary person. All public men 
and women of good sense, I should think, have this modesty. 
When, for instance, in my small way, poor Mrs. Brown comes 
simpering up to me, with her album in one hand, a pen in the 
other, and savs, " Ho, ho, dear Mr. Roundabout, write us one 
of your amusing," &c. &c., my beard drops behind my hand- 
kerchief instantly. Why am I to wag my chin and grin for 
Mrs. Brown's good pleasure? My dear madam, I have been 



132 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



J 



making faces all day. It is 1113' profession. I do my comic 
business with the greatest pains, seriousness, and trouble : and^l 
with it make, I hope, a not dishonest livelihood. If 3"ou ask 
Mons. Blondin to tea, you don't have a rope stretched from 
your garret window to the opposite side of the square, and 
request Monsieur to take his tea out on the centre of the rope ? 
I lay my hand on this waistcoat, and declare that not once in 
the course of our voyage together did I allow the Kentucky 
Giant to suppose I was speculating on his stature, or the Bearded 
Lady to surmise that I wished to peep under the handkerchief 
which muffled the lower part of her face. " And the more fool 
you," says some cynic. (Faugh, those cynics, I hate 'em !) 
Don't you know, sir, that a man of genius is pleased to have his 
genius recognized ; that a beauty likes to be admired ; that an 
a«tor Ukes to be applauded ; that stout old Wellington himself 
was pleased, and smiled when the people cheered him as he 
passed? Suppose- you had paid some respectful compliment to 
that lady? Suppose j'ou had asked that giant, if, for once, he 
would take anything at the liquor-bar? you might have learned 
a great deal of curious knowledge regarding giants and bearded 
ladies, about whom you evidently now know ver}^ little. There 
was that little boy of three yesirs old, with a fine beard alreadv, 
and his little legs and arms, as seen out of his little frock, covered 
with a dark down. What a queer little capering satyr ! He was 
quite good-natured, childish, rather solemn. He had a httle, 
Norval dress, I remember : the drollest little Norval. 

I have said the B. L.ihad another child. Now this was a 
little girl of some six years old, as fair and as smooth of skin, 
dear madam, as your own darling cherubs. She wandered 
about the great cabin quite melanchol3\ No one seemed to 
care for her. All the family affections were centred on Master 
Esau 3^onder. His little beard was beginning to be a little 
fortune alread3% whereas Miss Rosalba was of no good to the 
famil3'. No one would pa3' a cent to see her little fair face. 
No wonder the poor little maid was melanchol3^ As I looked 
at her, I seemed to walk more and more in a fair3^ tale, and 
more and more in a cavern of ogres. Was this a little fondling 
whom the3^ had picked up in some forest, where lie the picked 
bones of the queen, her tender mother, and the tough old 
defunct monarch, her father? No. Doubtless they were quite 
good-natured people, these. I don't believe they were unkind 
to the little girl without the moustaches. It ma3^ have been 
only m3^ fanc3^ that she repined because she had a cheek no 
more bearded than a rose's. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 133 

Would you wish your own daughter, madam, to have a 
smooth cheek, a modest air, and a gentle feminine behavior, or 
to be — I won't say a whiskered prodigy, like this Bearded 
Lady of Kentucky — but a masculine wonder, a virago, a female 
personage of more than female strength, courage, wisdom? 
Some authors, who shall be nameless, are, I know, accused of 
depicting the most feeble, brainless, namby-pamby heroines, for 
ever whimpering tears and prattling commonplaces. Tou would 
have the heroine of your novel so beautiful that she should 
charm the captain (or hero, whoever he may be) with her ap- 
pearance ; surprise and confound the bishop with her learning ; 
outride the squire and get the brush, and, when he fell from 
his horse, whip out a lancet and bleed him ; rescue from fever 
and death the poor cottager's family whom the doctor had 
given up ; make 21 at the butts with the rifle, when the poor 
captain only scored 18 ; give him twenty in fifty at billiards 
and beat him ; and draw tears from the professional Italian 
people by her exquisite performance (of voice and violoncello) 
in the evening; — I say, if a novelist would be popular with 
ladies — the great novel-readers of the world — this is the sort 
of heroine who would carry him through half a dozen editions. 
Suppose I had asked that Bearded Lady to sing ? Confess, now, 
miss, you would not have been displeased if I had told you that 
she had a voice like Lablache, only ever so much lower. 

My dear, you would like to be a heroine ? You would like 
to travel in triumphal caravans ; to see your effigy placarded 
on city walls ; to have your levees attended by admiring 
crowds, all crying out, ''Was there ever such a wonder of a 
woman ? " You would like admiration ? Consider the tax yon 
pay for it. You would be alone were you eminent. Were 3'ou 
so distinguished from your neighbors — I will not sa}'' b}" a 
beard and whiskers, that were odious — but by a great and 
remarkable intellectual superiorit}^ — would you, do you think, 
be anj^ the happier? Consider env3\ Consider solitude. Con- 
sider the jealous}^ and torture of mind which this Kentuck}^ lady 
must feel, suppose she should hear that there is, let us say, a 
Missouri prodigy, with a beard larger than hers ? Consider how 
she is separated" from her kind by the possession of that wonder 
of a beard ? When that beard grows gray, how lonely she will 
be, the poor old thing ! If it falls off, the public admiration 
falls off too ; and how she will miss it — the compliments of 
the trumpeters, the admiration of the crowd, the gilded progress 
of the car. I see an old woman alone in a decrepit old caravan, 
with cobwebs on the knocker, with a bhstered ensign flapping 



134 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

idly over the door. Would you like to be that deserted person? 
Ah, Chloe ! To be good, to be simple, to be modest, to be 
loved, be thy lot. Be thankful thou art not taller, nor stronger, 
nor richer, nor wiser than the rest of the world ! 



ON LETTS'S DIARY. 

Mine !s one of your No. 12 diaries, three shillings cloth 
boards ; silk limp, gilt edges, three-and-six ; French morocco, 
tuck ditto, four-and-six. It has two pages, ruled with faint 
lines for memoranda, for everj' week, and a ruled account at 
the end, for the twelve months from Januar}" to December, 
where you may set down your incomings and your expenses. 
I hope yours, m}' respected reader, are large ; that there are 
many fine rouncl sums of figures on each side of the page : 
liberal on the expenditure side, greater still on the receipt. 1 
hope, sir, you Mill be " a better man," as they say, in '62 than 
in this moribund '61, whose career of life is just coming to its 
terminus. A better man in purse? in body? in soul's health? 
Amen, good sir, in all. Who is there so good in mind, body 
or estate, but bettering won't still be good for him? O un- 
known Fate,' presiding over next year, if j-ou will give me 
better health, a better appetite, a better digestion, a better 
income, a better temper in '62 than you have bestowed in '61, 
I think your servant will be the better for the changes. For 
instance, I should be the better for a new coat. This one, I 
acknowledge, is very old. The family says so. My good 
friend, who amongst us would not be the better if he would 
give up some old habits? Yes, yes. You agree with me. 
You take the allegory? Alas ! at our time of life we don't like 
to give up those old habits, do we? It is ill to change. There 
is the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, laziness, for 
example. What man of sense likes to fling it oflf and put on a 
tight ,^//mc?!? prim dress-coat that pinches him? There is the 
cozy wraprascal, self-indulgence — how easy it is ! How warm ! 
How it always seems to fit ! You can walk out in it ; you can 
go down to, dinner in it. You can say of such what TuUy sa3^s 
of his books : Pernoctat nobiscum, peregrinatur ^ rusticatur. It 
is a little slatternly — it is a good deal stained — it isn't be- 
coming — it smells of cigar-smoke ; but, allons done ! let the 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 135 

world call me idle and sloven. I love my ease better than my 
neighbor's opinion. I live to please myself; not you, Mr. 
Dandy, with your supercilious airs. I am a philosopher. Per- 
haps I live in my tub, and don't make any other use of it — . 
We won't pursue further this unsavory metaphor; but, with 
regard to some of your old habits let us say — ^ 

1. The habit of being censorious, and speaking ill of your 

neighbors. 

2. The habit of getting into a passion with your man-ser- 
vant* your maid-servant, your daughter, wife, &c. 

S. The habit of indulging too much at table. 

4. The habit of smoking in the dining-room after dinner. 

5* The habit of spending insane sums of money in bric-a- 
brae, tall copies, binding, Elzevirs, &c. ; '20 Fort, outrageously 
fine horses, ostentatious entertainments, and what not.'' or, 

6 The habit of screwing meanlv, when rich, and chuckhng 
overthe saving of half a crown, whilst you are poisoning your 
friends and family with bad wine. 

7 The habit of going to sleep immediately after (Unner, 
instead of cheerfully entertaining Mrs. Jones and the lamily : 

or 

' 8. Ladies ! The habit of running up bills with the milliners. 

and swindling paterfamilias on the house bills. 

9. The habit of keeping him waiting for breakfast. 

10. The habit of sneering at Mrs. Brown and the Miss 
Browns, because they are not quite du monde, or quite so gen- 
teel as Lady Smith. 

11. The habit of keeping your wretched father up at balls 
till five o'clock in the morning, when he has to be at his office 

at eleven. , , , t • „ 

12. The habit of fighting with each other, dear Louisa, 

Jane, Arabella, Amelia. ^ , ^ u 4.u,.^« 

13. The habit of always ordering John Coachman, tliicc- 

quarters of an hour before you want him. , i . ^,. 

^ Such habits, I say, sir or madam, if you have had to note 
in your diary of '61, I have not the slightest doubt you vuU 
enter in vour pocket-book of '62. There are hal)its Nos. 4 aud 
7, for example. I am morally sure that some ot us ^.1 o 
g ve up those bad customs, though the women cry out and 
Irumble, and scold ever so justly. There are If -ts No. 9 
and 13. I feel perfectly certain, my dear young lad os that 
you will continue to keip John Coachman waiting ; that ou 
will continue to give the most satisfactory reasons foi keep ng 
hi^ wS and as for (9), you will show that you once (on 



136 ROUNDABOUT TAPERS. 

the 1st of April last, let us sa}-,) came to breakfast first, and 
that 3'ou are always first in consequence. 

Yes ; in our '62 diaries, I fear we ma}' all of us make some 
of the '61 entries. There is my friend Freehand, for instance. 
(Aha ! Master Freehand, how jou will laugh to find yourself 
here !) F. is in the habit of spending a little, ever so little, 
more than his income. He shows 3'ou how Mrs. Freehand 
works, and works (and indeed Jack Freehand, if you say she 
is an angel, j'ou don't say too much of her) ; how they toil, and 
how they mend, and patch, and pinch ; and how thej' canH live 
on their means. And I very much fear — na}^ I will bet him 
half a bottle of Gladstone 14s. per dozen claret — that the ac- 
count which is a little on the wrong side this year, will be a 
little on the wrong side in the next ensuing year of grace. 

A diary. Dies. Hodie. How queer to read are some of 
the entries in the journal ! Here are the records of dinners 
eaten, and gone the way of flesh. The lights burn blue some- 
how, and we sit before the ghosts of victuals. Hark at the 
dead jokes resurging ! Memor}' greets them with the ghost of 
a smile. Here are the lists of the individuals who have dined 
at 3'our own humble table. The agonies endured before and 
during those entertainments are renewed, and smart again. 
AVhat a failure that special grand dinner was ! How those dread- 
ful occasional waiters did break the old china ! What a dismal 
hash poor Mar}', the cook, made of the French dish which she 
would tvy out of FrancateUi! How angr}' Mrs. Pope was at 
not going down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop ! How Trimal- 
chio sneered at 3'our absurd attempt to give a feast ; and Har- 
pagon cried out at 3'our extravagance and ostentation ! How 
Lad3' Almack bullied the other ladies in the drawing-room 
(when no gentlemen were present) : never asked 3'ou back to 
dinner again : left her card b3' hci* footman : and took not the 
slightest notice of 3'Our wife and daughters at Lad3' Hustleby's 
assembly ! On the other hand, how easy, coz3^, merr3', com- 
fortable, those little dinners were ; got up at one or two days' 
notice ; when ever3'bod3' was contented ; the soup as clear as 
amber ; the wine as good as Trimalchio's own ; and the people 
kept their carriages waiting, and would not go away until mid- 
night ! 

Along with the catalogue of b3'gone pleasures, balls, ban- 
quets, and the like, which the pages record, comes a list of 
much more important occurrences, and remembrances of graver 
import. On two days of Dives's diar3^ are printed notices that 
*' Dividends are due at the Bank." Let us hope, dear sir, that 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 137 

this announcement considerably interests j'ou ; in wliich case, 
probably, you have no need of the almanac-maker's printed 
reminder. If you look over poor Jack Reckless' s note- book, 
amongst his memoranda of racing odds given and taken, per- 
haps you may read: — " Nabbam's bill, due 29th September, 
142/. 15*. 66/." Let us trust, as the day has passed, that the 
little transaction here noted has been satisfactorily terminated. 
If you are paterfamilias, and a worthy kind gentleman, no 
doubt you have marked down on your register, 17th December 
(say), "Boys come home." Ah, how carefully that blessed 
day is marked in their little calendars ! In my time it used to 
be, Wednesday, 13th November, " 5 weeks from the holidays;" 
Wednesday, 20th November, "4 weeks from the holidays;'' 
until sluggish time sped on, and we came to Wednesday 18th 
December. O rapture ! Do 3^ou remember pea-shooters ? I 
think we only had them on going home for holida3's from pnvate 
schools, — at public schools men are too dignified. And then 
came that glorious announcement, Wednesda}-, 27th, "Papa 
took us to the Pantomime ; " or if not papa, perhaps yow con- 
descended to go to the pit, under charge of the footman. 

That was near the end of the 3'ear — and mamma gave 
you a new pocket-book, perhaps, with a little coin, God bless 
iier, ifi the pocket. And that pocket-book was for next year, 
you know; and, in that pocket-book you had to write down 
that sad day, Wednesday, January 24th, eighteen hundred and 
never mind what, — when Dr. Birch's young friends were ex- 
pected to re-assemble. 

Ah me ! Every person who turns this page over has his 
own little diary, in paper or ruled in his memory tablets, and 
in which are set down the transactions of the now dying year. 
Boys and men, we have our calendar, mothers and maidens. 
For example, in your calendar pocket-book, my good Eliza, 
M^hat a sad, sad day that is — how fondly and bitterly remem- 
bered — when yowY boy went off to his regiment, to India, to 
danger, to battle perhaps. What a day was that last day at 
hom^e, when the tall brother sat yet amongst the family, the little 
ones round about him wondering at saddle-boxes, unitorms, 
sword-cases, gun-cases, and other wondrous apparatus of war 
and travel which poured in and filled the hall ; the new dress- 
ing-case for the beard not yet grown ; the great sword-case at 
which little brother Tom looks so admiringly ! What a dinner 
tliat was, that last dinner, when little and grown children as- 
sembled together, and all tried to be cheerful ! What a night 
was that last night, when the young ones were at roost tor the 



138 ROUISIDABOUT PAPERS. 



last time together under the same roof, and the mother lay 
alone in her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled 
one after another, amidst her tears, her watching, her fond 
prayers. What a night that was, and j^et how quickly the 
melancholy dawn came ! Onl}^ too soon the sun rose over the 
houses. And now in a moment more the city seemed to wake. 
The house began to stir. The famih" gathers together for the 
last meal. For the last time in the midst of them the widow 
kneels amongst her kneeling children, and falters a praj'er in 
which she commits her dearest, her eldest born, to the care 
of the Father of all. O night, what tears you hide — what 
prayers j^ou hear ! And so the nights pass and the days 
succeed, until that one comes when tears and parting shall be 
no more. 

In 3' our diary, as in mine, there are da3"s marked with sad- 
ness, not for this year onl}', but for all. On a certain day — 
and the sun perhaps, shining ever so brightly — the house- 
mother comes down to her famil}' with a sad face, which scares 
the children round about in the midst of their laughter and 
prattle. The}' may have forgotten — but she has not — a day 
which came, twentj^ 3'ears ago it may be, and which she re- 
members only too well : the long night-watch ; the dreadful 
dawning and the rain beating at the pane ; the infant speech- 
less, but moaning in its little crib ; and then the awful calm, 
the awful smile on the sweet cherub face, when the cries have 
ceased, and the little suffering breast heaves no more. Then 
the children, as the}' see their mother's face, remember this 
was the da}' on which their little brother died. It was before 
they were born ; but she remembers it. And as they pray to- 
gether, it seems almost as if the spirit of the little lost one was 
hovering round the group. So they pass away : friends, kin- 
dred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we 
go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, 
and on each more and more names are written ; unless haply 
*you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped 
off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the ter- 
minus alone. 

In this past year's diary is there any precious day noted on 
which you have made a new friend ? This is a piece of good 
fortune bestowed but grudgingly on the old. After a certain 
age a new friend is a wonder, like Sarah's child. Aged per- 
sons are seldom capable of bearing friendships. Do you re- 
member how warmly you loved Jack and Tom when you were 
at school ; what a passionate regard you had for Ned when you 



1 



PvOUXD ABOUT PAPERS. 139 

were at college, and the immense letters yon wrote to each 
other? How often do 3'ou write, now that postage costs noth- 
ing ? There is the age of blossoms and sweet budding green : 
the age of generous summer ; the autumn when the laaxes drop ; 
and then winter, sliivering and bare. Quick, children, and sit 
at my feet : for they are cold, very cold : and it seems as if 
neither wine nor worsted will warm 'em. 

In this past year's diary is there any dismal day noted in 
which you have lost a friend? In mine there is. I do not 
mean by death. Those who are gone, 3'ou have. Those who 
departed loving you, love you still ; and you love them always. 
They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true ; they are 
only gone into the next room : and you will presently get up 
and follow them, and yonder door will close upon yow, and you 
will be no more seen. As I am in this cheerful mood, I will 
tell 3^ou a fine and touching story of a doctor which I heard 
latel3\ About two ^^ears since there was, in our or some other 
city, a famous doctor, into whose consulting-room crowds came 
daily, so that they might be healed. Now this doctor had a 
suspicion that there was something vitally wrong with himself, 
and he went to consult another famous physician at Dublin, or 
it may be at Edinburgh. And he of Edinburgh punched his 
comrade's sides ; and listened at his heart and lungs ; and felt 
his pulse, I suppose ; and looked at his tongue ; and when he 
had done, Doctor London said to Doctor Edinburgh, " Doctor, 
how long have I to live ? " And Doctor Edinburgh said to 
Doctor London, " Doctor, 3^011 ma3^ last a year." 

Then Doctor London came home, knowing that what Doctor 
Edinburgh said was true. And he made up his accounts, with 
man and heaven, I trust. And he visited his patients as usual. 
And he went about healing, and cheering, and soothing and 
doctoring ; and thousands of sick people were benefited by him. 
And he said not a word to his famil3' at home ; but lived 
amongst them cheerful and tender, and calm, and loving ; 
'though he knew the night was at hand when he should see them 
and work no more. 

And it was winter time, and they came and told him that 
some man at a distance — very sick, but very rich — wanted 
him ; and. though Doctor London knew that he was himself at 
death's door, he went to the sick man ; for he knew the large 
fee would be good for his children after him. And he died ; 
and his family never knew until he was gone, that he had been 
long aware of the inevitable doom. 

This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not? You see, 



140 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

in regard to these Roundabout discourses, I never know whetlief 
they are to be merr}^ or dismal. My hobby has the bit in his 
mouth ; goes his own wa^^ ; and sometimes trots through a park, 
and sometimes paces by a cemeter3^ Two da3^s since came the 
printer's little emissarj', with a note sa3'ing, "We are waiting 
for the Roundabout Paper ! " A Roundabout Paper about what 
or whom? How stale it has become, that printed jollit}- about 
Christmas ! Carols, and wassail-bowls, and holly, and mistle- 
toe, and 3'ule-logs de comtnande ^ what heaps of these have we 
not had for 3'ears past ! Well, year after j^ear the season comes. 
Come frost, come thaw, come snow, come rain, 3'ear after 3Tar 
m3' neighbor the parson has to make his sermons. The3' are 
getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at 
Fortnum and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres are com- 
posing the Christmas pantomime, which our 3'oung folks will see 
and note anon in their little diaries. 

And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse with an 
extract out of that great diar3^, the newspaper? I read it but 
yesterday, and it has mingled with all m3' thoughts since then. 
Here are the two paragraphs, which appeared following each 
other : — 

" Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has been ap- 
pointed to the post of Legislative Member of the Council of the 
Governor-General." 

" Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor- General for Central 
India, died on the 29th of October, of bronchitis." 

These two men, whose different fates are recorded in two 
paragraphs and half a dozen lines of the same newspaper, were 
sisters' sons. In one of the stories b3' the present writer, a man 
is described tottering " up the steps of the ghaut," having just 
parted with his child, whom he is despatching to England from 
India. I wrote this, remembering in long, long distant days, 
such a ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta ; and a day when, down 
those steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came two children, 
whose mothers remained on the shore. One of those ladies was 
never to see her boy more ; and he, too, is just dead in India, 
" of bronchitis, on the 29th October." We were first-cousins ; 
had been little playmates and friends from the time of our birth ; 
and the first house in London to which I was taken, was that of 
our aunt, the mother of his Honor the Member of Council. His 
Honor was even then a gentleman of the long robe, being, in 
truth, a bab3' in arms. ^Ye Indian children were consigned to 
a school of which our deluded parents had heard a favorable 
report, but which was governed by a horrible little t3'rant, who 



II 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ^ 111 

made our young lives so miserable that I remember kneeling by 
my little bed of a night, and saying, " Pray God, I may di°am 
of my mother ! " Thence we went to a public school ; and my 
cousin to Addiscombe and to India. 

"For thirty-two years," the paper says, "Sir Richmond 
Shakespear faithfully and devotedly served the Govermnent of 
India, and during that period but once visited England, for a 
few months and on public duty. In his mihtary capacity he 
saw much service, was present in eight general engagements, 
and was badly wounded in the last. In 1840, when a yoimg 
lieutenant, he had the rare good fortune to be the means of 
rescuing fi'om almost hopeless slaver^^ in Khiva 41 G subjects of 
the Emperor of Russia ; and, but two years later, greatly con- 
tributed to the happ}^ recover}' of our own prisoners from a 
similar fate in Cabul. Throughout his career this officer was 
ever read}" and zealous for the public service, and freel}' risked 
life and liberty in the discharge of his duties. Lord Can- 
ning, to mark his high sense of Sir Richmond Shakespear's 
public services, had latety offered him the Chief Commissioner- 
ship of Mysore, which he had accepted, and was about to under- 
take, when death terminated his career." 

When he came to London the cousins and playfellows of 
early Indian da3's met once again, and shook hands. " Can I 
do anything for you ? " I remember the kind fellow asking. He 
was always asking that question : of all kinsmen ; of all widows 
and orphans ; of all the poor ; of 3'oung men who might need 
his purse or his service. I saw a young officer yesterday to 
whom the first words Sir Richmond Shakespear wrote on his 
arrival in India were, "Can I do anything for you?" His 
purse was at the command of all. His kind hand was always 
open. It was a gracious fate which sent him to rescue widows 
and captives. Where could they have had a champion more 
chivalrous, a protector more loving and tender? 

I write down his name in my little book, among those of 
others dearly loved, who, too, have been summoned hence. 
And so we meet and part ; we struggle and succeed ; or we fail 
and drop unknown on the way. As we leave the fond mother's 
knee, the rough trials of childhood and boyhood begin ; and 
then manhood is upon us, and the battle of life, with its chances, 
perils, wounds, defeats, distinctions. And Fort Wilham guns 
are saluting in one man's honor,* while the troops are filing the 
last volleys over the other's grave — over the grave of the 
bravo, the gentle, the faithful Christian soldier. 

* W. R. obiit March 22, 1862. 



142 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, 



NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAt. 

Most of us tell old stories in our families. The wife and 
children laugh for the hundredth time at the joke. The old 
servants (though old servants are fewer ever}^ day) nod and 
smile a recognition at the well-known anecdote. ''Don't tell 
that story of Grouse in the gun-room," sa3's Diggory to 
Mr. Hardcastle in the play, '' or I must laugh." As we twad- 
dle, and grow old and forgetful, we may tell an old story ; or, 
out of mere benevolence^ and a wish to amuse a friend when 
conversation is flagging, disinter a Joe Miller now and then ; 
but the practice is not quite honest, and entails a certain neces- 
sity of hypocrisy' on story hearers and tellers. It is a sad 
thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of anec- 
dote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant. What 
right have I to tell 'my " Grouse in the gun-room" over and 
over in the presence of ni}' wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, 
daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, conjBdential clerk, cu- 
rate, or what not? I smirk and go through the historj^ giving 
my admirable imitations of the characters introduced : I mimic 
Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grad3-'s brogue, 
Sandj's Scotch accent, to the best of ni}' power : and the fam- 
ily part of my audience laughs good-humoredl}'. Perhaps the 
stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is 
amused by it and laughs too. But this practice continued is 
not moral. This self-indulgence on your part, ni}' dear Pater- 
familias, is weak, vain — not to say culpable. I can imagine 
many a worth}- man, who begins unguardedly to read this page, 
and comes to the present sentence, lying back in his chair, 
thinking of that story which he has told innocently for fifty 
3-ears, and rather piteousl}- owning to himself, " ^Yell, well, it 
is wrong; I have no right to call on mj' poor wife to laugh, 
my daughters to affect to be amused, by that old, old jest of mine. 
And the}' would have gone on laughing, and they would have 
pretended to be amused, to their dying day, if this man had 
not flung his damper over our hilarity." ... I lay down the 
pen, and think, "Are there any old stories which I still tell 
myself in the bosom of my family? Have I any 'Grouse in 
my gun-room ? ' " If there are such, it is because my memory 
fails ; not because I want applause, and wantonly repeat my- 
self. You see, men with the so-called fund of anecdote will 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 143 

not repeat the same story to the same individual ; but they 
do think that, on a new party, the repetition of a joke ever so 
old may be honorably tried. I meet men walking the London 

street, bearing the best reputation, men of anecdotal powers : 

I know such, who very likely will read this, and say, ''Hang 
the fellow, he means me! " And so I do. No — no man ought 
to tell an anecdote more than thrice, let us say, unless he is 
sure he is speaking only to give pleasure to his hearers — unless 
he feels that it is not a mere desire for praise which makes him 
open his jaws. 

And is it not with writers as with raconteurs ? Ought they 
not to have their ingenuous modesty? May authors tell old 
stories, and how many times over? When I come to look at 
a place which I have visited any time these twenty or thirty 
years, I recall not the place merely, but the sensations I had 
at first seeing it, and which are quite different to my feelings 
to-day. That first day at Calais ; the voices of the women 
crying out at night, as the vessel came alongside the pier ; 
the supper at Quillacq's and the flavor of the cutlets and wine ; 
the red-calico canopy under which I slept ; the tiled floor, and 
the fresh smell of the sheets ; the wonderful postilion in his 
jack-boots and pigtail ; — all return with perfect clearness to 
my mind, and I am seeing them, and not the objects which are 
actually under my e3'es. Here is Calais. Yonder is that com- 
missioner I have known this score of 3"ears. Here are the 
women screaming and bustling over the baggage ; the people at 
the passport-barrier who take your papers. My good people, 
I hardly see you. You no more interest me than a dozen 
orange- women in Covent-Garden, or a shop book-keeper in Ox- 
ford Street. But you make me think of a time when you were 
indeed wonderful to behold — when the little French soldiers 
wore white cockades in their shakos — when the diligence was 
forty hours going to Paris ; and the great-booted postilion, as' 
surveyed by youthful eyes from the coupe, with his jurons, his 
ends of rope for the harness, and his clubbed pigtail, was a 
wonderful being, and productive of endless amusement. You 
young folks don't remember the apple-girls who used to follow 
the diligence up the hill beyond Boulogne, and the delights of 
the jolly road ? In making continental journeys with young 
folks, an oldster may be very quiet, and, to outward appear- 
ance, melancholy ; but really he has gone back to tlic days of 
his youth, and he is seventeen or eighteen years of age (as the 
case may be) , and is amusing himself with all his might. He 
is noting the horses as they come squealing out of the post- 



144 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

house 3'ard at midnight ; he is enjo^-ing the delicious meals at 
Beauvais and Amiens, and quaffing ad libitum the rich table- 
d'hote wine ; he is hail-fellow with the conductor, and alive to 
all the incidents of the road. A man can be alive in 1860 and 
1830 at the same time, don't you see? Bodil}', I ma}^ be in 
1860, inert, silent, torpid ; but in the spirit I am walking about 
in 1828. let us say; — in a blue dress-coat and brass buttons, 
a sweet figured silk waistcoat (which I button round a slim 
M-aist with perfect ease), looking at beautiful beings with gigot 
sleeves and tea-tray hats under the golden chestnuts of the 
Tuileries, or round the Place Vendome, where the drapeau hlanc 
is floating from the statueless column. Shall we go and dine 
at '' Bombarda's," near the " Hotel Breteuil," or at the " Cafe 
Virginie?" — Away ! "Bombarda's" and the " Hotel Breteuil" 
have been pulled down ever so long. The}^ knocked down 
the poor old Virginia Coffee-house last year. My spirit goes 
and dines there. My bod}', perhaps, is seated with ever so 
man}^ people in a railwa3^-carriage, and no wonder my compan- 
ions find me dull and silent. Have 3'ou read Mr. Dale Owen's 
" Footfalls on the Boundar}- of Another World?" — (My dear 
sir, it will make your hair stand quite refreshingly on end.) 
In that work you will read that when gentlemen's or ladies' 
spirits travel off a few score or thousand miles to visit a friend, 
their bodies lie quiet and in a torpid state in their beds or in 
their arm-chairs at home. So in this wa}^, I am absent. My 
soul whisks awa}' thirty 3'ears back into the past. I am look- 
ing out anxiousfy for a beard. I am getting past the age of 
loving B3'ron's poems, and pretend that I like Wordsworth and 
Shelle}^ much better. Nothing I eat or drink (in reason) dis- 
agrees with me ; and I know whom I think to be the most 
lovely creature in the world. Ah, dear maid (of that remote 
but well-remembered period), are yow a wife or widow now? — 
lare vou dead ? — are vou thin and withered and old ? — or are 
3'ou grown much stouter, with a false front? and so forth. 

O Eliza, Eliza! — Sta}', was she Eliza? Well, I protest I 
have forgotten what your Christian name was. You know I onlj^ 
met you for two da3's, but 3^our sweet face is before me now, and 
the roses blooming on it are as fresh as in that time of Ma3\ 
Ah, dear Miss X , my timid j^outh and ingenuous mod- 
esty would never have allowed me, even in my private 
thoughts, to address 3'ou otherwise than b}' 3'our paternal name, 
but that (though I conceal it) I remember perfectl}' well, aiid 
that your dear and respected father was a brewer, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 145 

Carillon. — I was awakened this morning with the chime 
which Antwerp cathedral clock plays at half-hours. The 
tune has been haunting me ever since, as tunes will. You 
dress, eat, drink, walk and talk to yourself to then* tune : their 
inaudible jingle accompanies you all day : you read the sen- 
tences of the paper to their rhythm. I tried uncouthly to 
imitate the tune to the ladies of the family at breakfast, and 
they say it is "the shadow dance of Dinorah.'" It may be 
so. I dimly remember that my body was once present during 
the performance of that opera, whilst my eyes were closed, 
and my intellectual faculties dormant at the back of the box ; 
howbeit, I have learned that shadow dance from hearing it 
pealing up ever so high in the air, at night, morn, noon. 

How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheery peal ! 
whilst the old cit}^ is asleep at midnight, or waking up rosy at 
sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept b}' the scudding rain 
which drives in gusts over the broad places, and the great 
shining river ; or sparkling in snow which dresses up a hun- 
dred thousand masts, peaks, and towers ; or wrapped round 
with thunder-cloud canopies, before which the white gables 
shine whiter ; daj' and night the kind little carillon plays its 
fantastic melodies overhead. The bells go on ringing. Quot 
vivos vacant^ mortnos plangunt^ fulgara frangunt ; so on to the 
past and future tenses, and for how many nights, days, and 
years ! Whilst the French were pitching their fulgara into 
Chasse's citadel, the bells went on ringing quite cheerfully. 
Whilst the scaffolds were up and guarded by Alva's soldiery, 
and regiments of penitents, blue, black, and gray, poured out 
of churches and convents, droning their dirges, and marching 
to the place of the Hotel de Ville, where heretics and rebels 
were to meet their doom, the bells up yonder were chanting at 
their appointed half-hours and quarters, and rang the mauvais 
quart d'heure for many a poor soul. This bell can see as far 
away as the towers and d^'kes of Rotterdam. That one can 
calla greeting to St. Ursula's at Brussels, and toss a recog- 
nition to that one at the town-hall of Oudenarde, and remember 
how after a great struggle there a hundred and fifty years ago 
the whole plain was covered with the flying French cavalr}- — 
Burgundy, and Berri, and the Chevalier of St. George %ing 
like'the rest. " What is your clamor about Oudenarde ? " says 
another bell (Bob Major this one must be). " Be still, thou 
querulous old clapper ! /can see over to Hougoumont and St. 
John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one 
Sunday in June, when 'there was such a battle going on in th(j 



i 



^4:6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

corn-fields there, as none of 3'ou others ever heard tolled of. 
Yes, from morning service until after vespers, the French and 
English were all at it, ding-dong." And then calls of business 
intervening, the bells have to give up their private jangle, 
resume their professional duty, and sing their hourly chorus 
out of Dlnorah. 

What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard ! I 
was awakened this morning to their tune, I say. I have been 
hearing it constantly ever since. And this house whence I 
w^rite, Murray says, is two hundred and ten miles from Ant- 
werp. And it is a week off ; and there is the bell still jangling 
its shadow dance out of Dinorah. An audible shadow 3'ou 
understand, and an invisible sound, but quite distinct ; and a 
plague take the tune ! 

Under the Bells. — Who has not seen the church under 
the bells? Those lofty aisles, those twilight chapels, that 
cumbersome pulpit with its huge carvings, that wide gray pave- 
ment flecked with various light from the jewelled windows, 
those famous pictures between the voluminous columns over the 
altars, which twinkle with their ornaments, their votive little 
silver hearts, legs, limbs, their little guttering tapers, cups of 
sham roses, and what not? I saw two regiments of little 
scholars creeping in and fonning square, each in its appointed 
place, under the vast roof; and teachers presently- coming to 
them. A stream of light from the jewelled windows beams 
slanting down upon each little squad of children, and the tall 
background of the church retires into a grayer gloom. Patter- 
ing little feet of laggards arriving echo through the great nave. 
They trot in and join their regiments, gathered under the slant- 
ing sunbeams. What are the}^ learning? Is it truth? Those 
two gray ladies with their books in their hands in the midst of 
these little people haA^e no doubt of the truth of every word 
they have printed under their eyes. Look, through the win- 
dows jewelled all over with saints, the light comes streaming 
down from the sk}' , and heaven's own illuminations paint the 
book ! A sweet, touching picture indeed it is, that of the little 
chiklren assembled in this immense temple, which has endured 
for ages, and grave teachers bending over them. Yes, the pic- 
ture is very pretty of the children and their teachers, and their 
book — but the text? Is it the truth, the only truth, nothing 
but the truth? If I thought so, I would go and sit down on 
the form cum parvulis, and learn the precious lesson with all my 
heart. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 147 

Beadle. — But T submit, an obstacle to conversions is the 
intrusion and impertinence of that Swiss fellow with the baldric 
— the officer who answers to the beadle of the British Islands 
and is pacing about the church with an eve on the cono-reoation! 
Now the boast of Catholics is that their churches are open^to all ' 
but in certain places and churches there are exceptions. At 
Rome I have been into St. Peter's at all hours : the doors are 
always open, the lamps are always burning, the faithful are for 
ever kneehng at one shrine or the other. But at Antwerp not 
so. In the afternoon you can go to the church, and be civilly 
treated ; but you must pay a franc at the side gate. In the 
forenoon the doors are open, to be s«pp, and there is no one to 
levy an entrance fee. I was stand mg ever so still, lookino- 
through the great gates of the choir at the twinkling lights, and 
listening to the distant chants of the priests performing the 
service, when a sweet chorus from the organ-loft broke out 
behind me overhead, and I turned round. My friend the 
drum-major ecclesiastic was down upon me in a moment. " Do 
not turn your back to the altar during divine service," says he, 
in very intelligible English. I take the rebuke, and turn a soft 
right-about face, and listen awhile as the service continues. 
See it I cannot, nor the altar and its ministrants. We are 
separated from these by a great screen and closed gates of iron, 
through which the lamps glitter and the chant comes by gusts 
onty. Seeing a score of children trotting down a side aisle, I 
think I may follow them. I am tired of looking at that hideous 
old pulpit with its grotesque monsters and decorations. I sHp 
off to the side aisle ; but my friend the drum-major is instantly'' 
after me — almost I thought he was going to lay hands on me. 
"You mustn't go there," sa3^s he; " 3'ou mustn't disturb the 
service." I was moving as quietty as might be, and ten paces 
off there were twenty children kicking and clattering at their 
ease. I point them out to the Swiss. " They come to praj^" 
sa3's he. " You don't come to pra}^, 3''ou — " " When I come 
to pay," says I, " I am welcome," and with this withering sar- 
casm, I walk out of church in a huff. I don't envy the feelings 
of that beadle after receiving point blank such a stroke of wit. 

Leo Belgtcus. — Perhaps j^ou will say after this I am a 
prejudiced critic. I see the pictures in the cathedral fuming 
under the rudeness of that beadle, G'" at the lawful hours and 
prices, pestered by a swarm of shabby touters^ who come behind 
me chattering in bad English, and who would have me see tli'' 
sights through their mean, ai^eedy eyes. Better see Rubens any- 



148 ROUNDABOUT PAPEES. 

where than in a church. At the Academ}', for example, wnere 
30U may stud}' him at 30ur leisure. But at church ? — I would as 
soon ask Alexandre Dumas for a sermon. Either would paint 
you a martyrdom very fiercel}' and picturesquel}^ — writhing 
muscles, flaming coals, scowling captains and executioners, 
swarming gi'oups, and light, shade, color most dexterously 
brilliant or dark ; but in Rubens I am admiring the performer 
rather than the piece. With what astonishing rapidit}^ he 
travels over his canvas ; how telhngly the cool lights and 
warm shadows are made to contrast and relieve each other ; ^1 
how that blazing, blows}- penitent in 3'ellow satin and glitter- 
ing hair carries down t|||^ stream of light across the picture ! M\ 
This is the wa}- to work, my bo3's, and earn a hundred florins 
a da3^ See ! I am as sure of my line as a skater of making 
his figure of eight ! and down with a sweep goes a brawn}^ arm 
or a flowing curl of draper}^ The figures arrange themselves 
as if by magic. The paint-pots are exhausted in furnishing 
brown shadows. The pupils look wondering on, as the master 
careers over the canvas. Isabel or Helena, wife No. 1 or No. 
2, are sitting b}^ buxom, exuberant, read}- to be painted ; and 
the children are boxing in the corner, waiting till they are 
wanted to figure as cherubs in the picture. Grave burghers 
and gentlefolks come in on a visit. There are oysters and 
Rhenish alwa3's read}' on 3'onder table. Was there ever such 
a painter? He has been an ambassador, an actual Excellenc}^ 
and what better man could be chosen ? He speaks all the lan- 
guages. He earns a hundred florins a da3'. Prodigious ! 
Thirt3'-six thousand five hundred florins a 3'ear. Enormous ! 
He rides out to his castle with a score of gentlemen after him, 
like the Governor. That is his own portrait as St. George. 
You know he is an English knight? Those are his two wives as 
the two Maries. He chooses the handsomest wives. He rides 
the handsomest horses. He paints the handsomest pictures. 
He gets the handsomest prices for them. That slim 3'oung 
Van D3'ck, who was his pupil, has genius too, and is painting 
all the noble ladies in England, and turning tlie heads of some 
of them. And Jordaens — what a droll dog and clever fellow ! 
Have 3'ou seen his fat Silenus ? The master liimself could not 
paint better. And his altar-piece at St. Bavon's? Pie can 
paint 3'Ou anything, that Jordaens can — a drunken jollification 
of boors and doxies, or a mart3'r howling witli half his skin ofi". 
What a knowledge of anatom3' ! But there is nothing like the 
master — nothing. He can paint 3'Ou his thirt3'-six thousand 
five hundred florins' worth a 3^ear. Have 30U heard of what he 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 149 

has done for the French Court? Prodigious ! I can't look at 
Rubens's pictures without fancying I sec that handsome fioure 
swaggering before tlie canvas. And Hans Hemmelinck at 
Bruges ? Have 3-ou never seen that dear old hospital of St. 
John, on passing the gate of which you enter into the liftecnth 
century ? I see the wounded soldier still lingering in the house 
and tended by the kind gray sisters. His little panel on its 
easel is placed at the light. He covers his board with the most 
wondrous, beautiful little figures, in robes as bright as rubies 
and amethysts. I think he must have a magic glass, in which 
he catches the reflection of little cherubs with many-colored 
wings, very little and bright. Angels, in long crisp robes of 
white, surrounded with halos of gold, come and flutter across 
the mirror, and he draws them. He hears mass every day. 
He fasts through Lent. No monk is more austere and holy 
than Hans. Which do you love best to behold, the lamb or 
the lion? the eagle rushing through the storm, and pouncing 
mayhap on carrion ; or the linnet warbling on the spray? 

By much the most delightful of the Christopher set of Rubens 
to my mind (and ego is introduced on these occasions, so that 
the opinion may pass only for my own, at the reader's humble 
service to be received or declined,) is the " Presentation in the 
Temple : " splendid in color, in sentiment sweet and tender, 
finely conveying the story. To be sure, all the others tell their 
tale unmistakably — witness that coarse "Salutation," that 
magnificent " Adoration of the Kings "(at the Museum), by 
the same strong downright hands; that wonderful "Com- 
munion of St. Francis," which, I think, gives the ke}' to the 
artist's faire better than any of his performances. I have passed 
hours before that picture in my time, trying and sometimes 
fancying I could understand b^' what masses and contrasts the 
artist arrived at his effect. In man^^ others of the pictures parts 
of his method are painfull}^ obvious, and j-ou see how grief and 
agon}^ are produced hy blue lips, and e3'es rolling blood shot 
with dabs of vermilion. There is something simple in the prac- 
tice. Contort the eyebrow sufficientl}', and place the e3'eball 
near it, — by a few lines 3'ou have anger or fierceness depicted. 
Give me a mouth with no special expression, and pop a dab of 
carmine at each extremity — and there are the lips smiling. 
This is art if 3' on will, but a veiy naive kind of art: and now 
3"0U know the trick, don't 3'ou see how eas3^ it is? 

Tu QuoQUE. — Now you know the trick, suppose 3'OU take 
a canvas and see whether yow can do it? There are brushes, 



150 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



1 



11 



palettes, and gallipots full of paint and varnish. Have 3-011 
tried, mj dear sir — you who set up to be a connoisseur? Have 
you tried t I have — and many a day. And the end of the 
day's labor? O dismal conclusion ! Is this puerile niggling, this 
feeble scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce — you, 
who but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and were 
pointing out the tricks of his mystery? Pardon, O great chief, 
magnificent master and poet ! You can do. We critics, who 
sneer and are wise, can but pry, and measure, and doubt, and 
carp. Look at the lion. Did 3-ou ever see such a gross, shaggy, i% 
mangy, roaring brute ? Look at him eating lumps of raw meat 
— positively bleeding, and raw and tough — till, faugh ! it turns 
one's stomach to see him — O the coarse wretch ! Yes, but he 
is a lion. Rubens has lifted his great hand, and the mark he 
has made has endured for two centuries, and we still continue 
wondering at him, and admiring him. What a strength in that 
arm ! What splendor of will hidden behind that tawny beard, 
and those honest e3'es ! Sharpen your pen, m3^ good critic, 
shoot a feather into him ; hit him, and make him wince. Yes, 
you may hit him fair, and make him bleed, too ; but, for all 
that, he is a li®n — a might3', conquering, generous, rampa- 
geous Leo Belgicus — monarch of his wood. And he is not dead 
yet, and I will not kick at him. 

Sir Antony. — In that "Pietk" of Van D3-ck, in the Mu- 
seum, have 3-0U ever looked at the yellow-robed angel, with the 
black scarf thrown over her wings and robe ? What a charm- 
ing figure of grief and beauty ! What a pretty compassion it 
inspires ! It soothes and pleases me like a sweet rhythmic 
chant. See how delicately the yellow robe contrasts with the 
blue sky behind, and the scarf binds the two ! If Rubens lacked 
grace. Van Dyok abounded in it. What a consummate ele- 
gance ! What a perfect cavalier ! ' No wonder the fine ladies in 
England admired Sir Antony. Look at — 

Here the clock strikes three, and the three gendarmes who 
keep the Musee cr3^ out, " Allans I Sortons ! 11 est trois heures ! 
Allez / Sortez ! " and the3^ skip out of the gallery as happ3' as 
bo3-s running from school. And we must go too, for though 
many stay behind — man3- Britons wdth Murray's Handbooks in 
their handsome hands — they have paid a franc for entrance-fee, 
3'ou see ; and we knew^ nothing about the franc for entrance 
until those gendarmes with sheathed sabres had driven us out of 
this Paradise. 

But it was good to go and drive on the great qua3'^s, and 



ROUNDABOUT PAPKKS. 151 

see the ships unlading, and b}' the citadel, and wonder how- 
abouts and whereabouts it w^as so strong. We expect a citadel 
to look like Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein at least. But in this 
one there is nothing to see but a flat plain and some ditches, 
and some trees, and mounds of uninteresting green. And then 
I remember how there was a boy at school, a little dump}- fellow 
of no personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be overcome 
except by a much bigger champion, and the immensest quan- 
tity of thrashing. A perfect citadel of a boy, with a General 
Chasse sitting in that bomb-proof casemate, his heart, letting 
blow after blow come thumping about his head, and never think- 
ing of giving in. 

And we go home, and we dine in the company of Britons, 
at the comfortable Hotel du Pare, and we have bought a novel 
apiece for a shilling, and ever}^ half-hour the sweet carillon 
plays the waltz from. Dinorah in the air. And we have been 
happy ; and it seems about a month since we left London j-es- 
terday ; and nobody knows where we are, and we defy care and 
the postman. 

Spoorweg. — Vast green flats, speckled by spotted cows, 
and bound by a gray frontier of windmills ; shining canals 
stretching through the green ; odors like those exhaled from the 
Thames in the dog-days, and a fine pervading smell of cheese ; 
little trim houses, with tall roofs, and great windows of many 
panes ; gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over pea-green 
canals ; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers' women, with 
laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings ; about the houses 
and towns which we pass a great air of comfort and neatness ; 
a queer feehng of wonder that 3'ou can't understand what your 
fellow-passengers are saying, the tone of whose voices, and a 
certain comfortable dowdiness of dress, are so like our own ; — 
whilst we are remarking on these sights, sounds, smells, the 
little railway journey from Rotterdam to the Hague comes to an 
end. I speak to the railwa}- porters and hackney coachmen in 
English, and the}' reply in their own language, and it seems 
somehow as if we understood each otlier perfectly. The carriage 
drives to the handsome, comfortable, cheerful hotel. We sit 
down a score at the table ; and there is one foreigner and his 
wife, — I mean every other man and woman at dinner are Eng- 
lish. As we are close to the sea, and in the midst of endless 
canals, we have no fish. We are reminded of dear England by 
the nol)le prices whicli wo pay for wines. I confess I lost my 
temper yesterday at Rotterdam, where I had to pay a florin foi 



152 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

a bottle of ale (the water not being drinkable, and country or 
Bavarian beer not being genteel enough for the hotel) ; — I con- 
fess, I sa}^, that my fine temper was ruffled, when the bottle of 
pale ale turned out to be a pint bottle ; and I meekly told the 
waiter that I had bought beer at Jerusalem at a less price. But 
then Rotterdam is eighteen hours from London, and the steamer 
with the passengers and beer comes up to the hotel windows ; 
whilst to Jerusalem thej' have to carr}' the ale on camels' backs 
from Be^TOut or Jaffa, and through hordes of marauding Arabs, 
who evidently don't care for pale ale^ though I am told it is not 
forbidden in the Koran. Mine woi Id have been very good, but 
I choked with rage whilst drinking it. A florin for a bottle, 
and that bottle having the words "imperial pint," in bold re- 
lief, on the surface ! It was too much. I intended not to say 
anything about it ; but I must speak. A florin a bottle, and 
that bottle a pint ! Oh, for shame ! for shame 1 I can't cork 
down my indignation ; I froth up with fury ; I am pale with 
wrath, and bitter with scorn. 

As we drove through the old. city at night, how it swarmed 
and hummed with life ! What a special clatter, crowd, and 
outcry there was in the Jewish quarter, where myriads of 3'oung 
ones were trotting about the fishj^ street ! Why don't they have 
lamps ? We passed by canals seeming so full that a pailful of 
water more would overflow the place. The laquais-de-place calls 
out the names of the buildings : the town-hall, the cathedral, the 
arsenal, the synagogue, the statue of Erasmus. Get along ! 
We know the statue of Erasmus well enough. We pass over 
drawbridges by canals where thousands of barges are at roost. 
At roost — at*^ rest ! Shall we have rest in those bedrooms, 
those ancient lofty bedrooms, in that inn where we have to pay 
a florin for a pint of pa— psha ! at the " New Bath Hotel" on 
the Boompjes? If this dreary edifice is the "New Bath," 
what must the Old Bath be like? As I feared to go to bed, I 
sat in the coffee-room as long as I might ; but three young men 
were imparting their private adventures to each other with such 
freedom and liveliness that I felt I ought not to listen to their 
artless prattle. As I put the light out, and felt the bedclothes 
and darkness overwhelm me, it was with an awful sense of 
terror — that sort of sensation which I should think going down 
in a diving-bell would give. Suppose the apparatus goes wrong, 
and they don't understand your signal to mount ? Suppose your 
matches miss fire when you wake ; when you want them, when 
you will have to rise in half an hour, and do battle with the 
horrid enemy who crawls on you in the darkness? I protest I 



II 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 153 

never was more surprised than when I woke and beheld the 
light of dawn. Indian birds and strange trees were visible on 
the ancient gilt hangings of the loft}- chamber, and through the 
windows tlie Boompjes and the ships along the quay. AVe have 
all read of deserters being brought x^ut, and made to kneel, with 
their eyes bandaged, and hearing the word to " Fire" given! 
I declare I underwent all the terrors of execution that night, 
and wonder how I ever escaped unwounded. 

But if ever I go to the " Bath Hotel," Rotterdam, again, I 
am a Dutchman. A guilder for a bottle of pale ale, and that 
bottle a pint ! Ah ! for shame — for shame ! 

Mine Ease in Mine Inn. — Do you object to talk about 
inns ? It always seems to me to be very good talk. Walter 
Scott is full of inns. In " Don Quixote " and " Gil Bias " there 
is plent}^ of inn-talk. Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett constantly 
speak about them ; and, in their travels, the last two tot up 
the bill, and describe the dinner quite honestlj' ; whilst Mr. 
Sterne becomes sentimental over a cab, and weeps generous 
tears over a donkey. 

How I admire and wonder at the information in Murray's 
Handbooks — wonder how it is got, and admire the travellers 
who get it. For instance, you read : Amiens (please select 
your towns), 60,000 inhabitants. Hotels, &c. — ''Lion d'Or," 
good and clean. " Le Lion d' Argent," so so. " Le Lion 
Noir," bad, dirty, and dear. Now say, there are three travel- 
lers — three inn-inspectors, who are sent forth b}^ Mr. Murray 
on a great commission, and who stop at every inn in the world. 
The eldest goes to the " Lion d'Or " — capital house, good table- 
d'hote, excellent wine, moderate charges. The second commis- 
sioner tries the " Silver Lion" — tolerable house, bed, dinner, 
bill and so forth. But fanc}^ Commissioner No. 3 — the poor 
fag, doubtless, and boots of the party. He has to go to the 
" Lion Noir." He knows he is to have a bad dinner — he eats 
it uncomplainingly. He is to have bad wine. He swallows it, 
grinding his wretched teeth, and aware that he will be unwell 
in consequence. He knows he is to have a dirty bed, and 
what he is to expect there. He pops out the candle. He sinks 
into those dingy sheets. He dehvers over his body to the 
nightly tormentors, he pays an exorbitant bill, and he writes 
down, " Lion Noir, bad, dirty, dear." Next day the commis- 
sion sets out for Arras, we will say, and they begin again : 
"Le Cochon d'Or," " Le Cochon d' Argent," " Le Cochon 
Noir" — and that is poor Boots's inn, of course. What a life 



154 HOUXDABOUT PAPERS. 



^ 



that poor man must lead ! What horrors of dinners he has to 
go through ! What a hide he must have ! And j^et not im- 
pervious ; for unless he is bitten, how is he to be able to warn 
others ? No : on second thoughts, 3'ou will perceive that he 
ought to have a very delicate skin. The monsters ought to 
troop to him eagerlv, and bite him instantaneously and freel}', 
so that he ma}' be able to warn all future handbook buyers of 
their danger. I fanc}^ this man devoting himself to danger, to 
dirt, to bad dinners, to sour wine, to damp beds, to midnight 
agonies, to extortionate bills. I admire him, I thank him. 
Think of this champion, who devotes his body for us — this 
dauntless gladiator going to do battle alone in the darkness, 
with no other armor than a light helmet of cotton, and a hrica 
of calico. I pit}^ and honor him. Go, Spartacus ! Go, 
devoted man — to bleed, to groan, to suffer — and smile in 
silence as the wild beasts assail thee ! 

How did I come into this talk? I protest it was the word 
inn set me off — and here is one, the "Hotel de Belle Vue," 
at the Hague, as comfortable, as handsome, as cheerful as any 
I ever took mine ease in. And the Bavarian beer, m}- dear 
friend, how good and brisk and light it is ! Take another glass 
— it refreshes and does not stupefy — and then we will sally 
out, and see the town and the park and the pictures. 

The prettiest little brick cit}', the pleasantest little park to 
ride in, the neatest comfortable people walking about, the canals 
not unsweet, and busy and picturesque with old-world life. 
Rows upon rows of houses, built with the neatest little bricks, 
with windows fresh painted, and tall doors polished and carved 
to a nicety. What a pleasant spacious garden our inn has, all 
sparkling with autumn flowers and bedizened with statues ! 
At the end is a row of trees, and a summer-house, over the 
canal, where you might go and smoke a pipe with Mynheer 
Van Dunck, and quite cheerfully' catch the ague. Yesterda}', 
as we passed, tliey were making hay, and stacking it in a barge 
which was Ivino- bv the meadow, handv. Round about Ken- 
sington Palace there are houses, roofs, chimne3'S, and bricks 
like these. I feel that a Dutchman is a man and a brother. 
It is very funny to read the newspaper, one can understand it 
somehow. Sure it is the neatest, gayest little city — scores 
and hundreds of mansions looking like Che^'ue Walk, or the 
ladies' schools about Chiswick and Hackney. 

Le Gros Lot. — To a few luckv men the chance befalls of 
reaching fame at once, and (if it is of any profit morituro) re- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 155 

taining the admiration of the world. Did poor Oliver, when he 
was at Leyden yonder, ever think that he should paint a little 
picture which should secure him the applause and pity of all 
Europe for a century after? He and JSterne drew the' twenty 
thousand prize of fame. The latter had splendid iiistnhnents 
during his lifetime. The ladies pressed round him ; the wits 
admired him, the fashion hailed the successor of Rabelais. 
Goldsmith's little gem was hardly so valued until later days. 
Their works still form the wonder and deliglit of the lovers of 
English art; and the pictures of the Vicar and Uncle Toby are 
among the masterpieces of our English school. Here in the 
Hague Gallery is Paul Potter's pale, eager face, and yonder is 
the magnificent work by which the young fellow achieved his 
fame. How did you, so young, come to paint so well? What 
hidden power lay in that weakly lad that enabled him to achieve 
such a wonderful victory? Could little Mozart, when he was 
five years old, tell you how he came to play those wonderful 
sonatas ? Potter was gone out of the world before he was thirty, 
but left this prodigy (and I know not how many more speci- 
mens of his genius and skill) behind him. The details of this 
admirable picture are as curious as the effect is admirable and 
complete. The weather being unsettled, and clouds and sun- 
shine in the gust3' sky, we saw in our little tour numberless 
Paul Potters — the meadows streaked with sunshine and spotted 
with the cattle, the city twinkling in the distance, the thunder- 
clouds glooming overhead. Napoleon carried oft the picture 
(vide Murray) amongst the spoils of his bow and spear to 
decorate his triumph of the Louvre. If I were a conquering 
prince, I would have this picture certainly, and the Raphael 
"Madonna" from Dresden, and the Titian "Assumption" 
from Venice, and that matchless Rembrandt of the "Dissec- 
tion." The prostrate nations would howl with rage as my 
gendarmes took off the pictures, nicely packed, and addressed 
to " Mr. the Director of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, 
at Paris. This side uppermost." The Austrians, Prussians, 
Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and visit my 
capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from their 
native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, 
and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair 
occasioned by the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah ! 
I would offer them a pinch of snuff' out of my box as I walked 
along my gallery, with their Excellencies cringing after me. 
Zenobia was a line woman and a queen, but she had to walk in 
Aurelian's triumph. The procede was peu dellcat f En usez 



156 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

vous, mon cher 7nonsieur ! (The marqiiis says the '' Macaba" is 
delicious.) What a splendor of color there is in that cloud ! 
Vrhat a richness, what a freedom of handUng, and what a 
marvellous precision ! I trod upon your Excellency's corn? — 
a thousand pardons. His Excellency grins and declares that 
he rather likes to have his corns trodden on. Were 3'ou over 
very angry with Soult — about that Murillo which we have 
bought? The veteran loved that picture because it saved the 
life of a fellow-creature — the fellow- creature who hid it, and 
whom the Duke intended to hang unless the picture was forth- 



commg. 



We gave several thousand pounds for it — how many thou- 
sand? About its merit is a question of taste which we will not 
here argue. If you choose to place Murillo in the first class of 
painters, founding his claim upon these Virgin altar-pieces, I 
am your humble servant. Tom Moore painted altar-pieces as 
well as Milton, and warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of the 
Angels after his fashion. I wonder did Watteau ever try 
historical subjects? And as for Greuze, 3^ou know that his 
heads will fetch 1,000/., 1,500/., 2,000/. —as much as a Sevres 
'' cabaret" of Rose du Barri. If cost price is to be your crite- 
rion of worth, Vv^hat shall we sa}' to that little receipt for 10/. for 
the cop3'right of " Paradise Lost," which used to hang in old 
Mr. Rogers's room? When living painters, as frequently hap- 
pens in our days, see their pictures sold at auctions for four 
or five times the sums which they originally received, are they 
enraged or elated? A hundred 3'ears ago the state of the 
picture-market was different : that dreary old Italian stock was 
much higher than at present ; Rembrandt himself, a close man, 
was known to be in difficulties. If ghosts are fond of money 
still, what a wrath his must be at the present value of his 
works ! 

The Hague Rembrandt is the gi-eatest and grandest of all 
his pieces to mj^ mind. Some of the heads are as sweetly and 
lightl}^ painted as Gainsborough ; the faces not ugly, but deli- 
cate and high-bred ; the exquisite gray tones are charming to 
mark and stud}- ; the heads not plastered, but painted with a 
free, liquid brush : the result, one of the great victories won by 
this consummate chief, and left for the wonder and delight of 
succeeding ages. 

The humblest volunteer in the ranks of art, who has sensed 
a campaign or two ever so ingloriously, has at least this good 
fortune of understanding, or fanc^^ng he is able to understand, 
how the battle has been fought, and how the engaged general 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 157 

won it. This is the Rhinelaiider's most brilliant achievement 

victory along the whole Une. The " Night-watch " at Amster- 
dam is magnificent in parts, but on the side to the spectator's 
right, smoky and dim. The "Five Masters of the Drapers" 
is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power. 
What words are these to express a picture ! to describe a 
description ! I once saw a moon riding in the sky serenel}', 
attended by her sparkhng maids of honor, and a little lady said' 
with an air of great satisfaction, ^^ I mast sketch ■it.'" Ah, my 
dear lady, if with an H.B., a Bristol board, and a bit of india- 
rubber, you can sketch the starry firmament on high, and the 
moon in her glory, I make you my compliment ! I can't sketch 
*' The Five Drapers" with any ink or pen at present at com- 
mand — but can look with all my ej-es, and be thankful to have 
seen such a masterpiece. 

They say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the old ten- 
ant of the mill. What does he think of the " Vander Heist" 
which hangs ojJposite his ''Night-watch," and which is one of 
the great pictures of the world ? It is not painted b}- so great 
a man as Rembrandt ; but there it is — to see it is an event of 
your life. Having beheld it you have lived in the year 1648, 
and celebrated the treaty of Munster. You have shaken the 
hands of the Dutch Guardsmen, eaten from their platters, drunk 
their Rhenish, heard their jokes, as they wagged their jolly 
beards. The Amsterdam Catalogue discourses thus about it : — 
a model catalogue : it gives 3'ou the prices paid, the signatures 
of the painters, a succinct description of the work. 

" This masterpiece represents a banquet of the civic guard, 
which took place on the 18th June, 1648, in the great hall of 
the St. Joris Doele, on the Singel at Amsterdam, to celebrate 
the conclusion of the Peace at Munster. The thirtj'-five figures 
composing the picture are all portraits. 

" ' The Captain Witse ' is placed at the head of the table, 
and attracts our attention first. He is dressed in black velvet, 
his breast covered with a cuirass, on his head a broad-brimmed 
black hat with white plumes. He is comfortably seated on a 
chair of black oak, with a velvet cushion, and holds in his left 
hand, supported on his knee, a magnificent drinking-horn, sur- 
roimded by a St. George destroying the dragon, and ornamented 
with olive-leaves. The captain's features express cordiality 
and good-humor ; he is grasping the hand of ' Lieutenant Van 
Wavern' seated near him, in a habit of dark gray, with laoe 
and buttons of gold, lace-collar and wristbands, his feet crossed, 
with boots of yellow leather, with large tops, and gold spurs, 



158 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



•^^ w^ ^^^ ' 



on his head a black hat and dark-brown pkimes. Behind him, 
at the centre of the picture, is the standard-bearer, ' Jacob 
Banning,' in an eas}' martial attitude, hat in hand, his right 
hand on his chair, his right leg on his left knee. He holds the 
flag of blue silk, in which the Virgin is embroidered, (such a 
silk ! such a flag ! such a piece of painting !) emblematic of thejl 
town of Amsterdam. The banner covers his shoulder, and he 
looks towards the spectator frankly and complacently. 

"The man behind him is probably one of the sergeants. 
His head is bare. He wears a cuirass, and 3'ellow gloves, gray 
stockings, and boots with large tops, and kneecaps of cloth. 
He has a napkin on his knees, and in his hand a piece of ham, 
a slice of bread, and a knife. The old man behind is probably 
' William the Drummer.' He has his hat in his right hand, 
and in his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine. 
He wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with little 
slashes of yellow silk. Behind the drummer, two matchlock- 
men are seated at the end of the table. One in a large black 
habit, a napkin on his knee, a hausse-col of iron, and a linen 
scarf and collar. He is eating with his knife. The other holds 
a long glass of white wine. Four musketeers, with different 
shaped hats, are behind these, one holding a glass, the three 
others with their guns on their shoulders. Other guests are 
placed between the personage who is giving the toast and the 
standard-bearer. One with his hat off", and his hand uplifted, 
is talking to another. The second is carving a fowl. A third 
holds a silver plate ; and another, in the background, a silver 
flagon, from which he fills a cup. The corner behind the cap- 
tain is filled by two seated personages, one of whom is peeling 
an orange. Two others are standing, armed with halberts, of 
whom one holds a plumed hat. Behind him are other three 
individuals, one of them holding a pewter pot, on which the 
name ' Poock,' the landlord of the ' Hotel Doele,' is engraved. 
At the back, a maid-servant is coming in with a pasty, crowned 
with a turkey. Most of the guests are Kstening to the captain. 
From an open window in the distance, the facades of two 
houses are seen, surmounted by stone figures of sheep." 

There, now you know all about it : now 3'ou can go home 
and paint just such another. If you do, do pray remember >tG 
paint the hands of the figures as they are here depicted ; they 
are as wonderful portraits as the faces. None of 3'oar slim 
Van D3'ck elegancies, which have done dut}^ at the cufl^s of so 
many doublets ; but each man with a hand for himself, as with 
a face for himself. I blushed for the coarseness of on© of the 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 159 

chiefs ill this great company, that fellow behind " Williaji 
THE Drummer," splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of 
the public ; and holding- a pork-bone in his hand. Suppose the 
Saturday Review critic were to come suddenly' on this picture ? 
Ah ! what a shock it would give that noble nature ! Why is 
that knuckle of pork not painted out? at any rate, why is not 
a little fringe of lace painted round it? or a cut pink paper? or 
couldn't a smelhng-bottle be painted in instead, with a crest 
and a gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief, in lieu of 
the horrid pig, with a pink coronet in the corner? or suppose 
you covered the man's hand (which is ver}" coarse and strono-), 
and gave him the decency of a kid glove ? But a piece of pork 
in a naked hand? O nerves and eau de Cologne, hide it, 
hide it ! 

In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, 
give me th}^ hand as nature made it ! A great, and famous, 
and noble handiwork I have seen here. Not the greatest picture 
in the world — not a work of the highest genius — but a per- 
formance so great, various, and admirable, so shrewd of humor, 
so wise of observation, so honest and complete of expression, 
that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it will 
be a pleasure for days to come. Well done, Bartholomeus 
Vander Heist ! Brave, meritorious, victorious, happ}' Bartholo- 
mew, to whom it has been given to produce a masterpiece ! 

Ma}^ I take off mj' hat and pay a respectful compliment to 
Jan Steen, Esq. ? He is a glorious composer. His humor is 
as frank as Fielding's. Look at his own figure sitting in the 
window-sill yonder, and roaring with laughter ! What a twinkle 
in the ej^es ! what a mouth it is for a song, or a joke, or a 
noggin ! I think the composition in some of Jan's pictures 
amounts to the sublime, and look at them with the same delight 
and admiration which I have felt before works of the very 
highest style. This gallery is admirable — and the cit}' in 
which the gallery is, is jDcrhaps even more wonderful and 
curious to behold than the gallery. 

The first landing at Calais (or, I suppose, on any foreign 
shore) — the first sight of an Eastern city — the first view of 
Venice — and this of Amsterdam, are among the delightful 
shocks which I have had as a traveller. Amsterdam is as good 
as Venice, with a superadded humor and grotesqueness, which 
gives the sight-seer the most singular zest and pleasure. A run 
through Pekin I could hardly fanc}' to be more odd, strange, 
and yet familiar. This rush, and crowd, and prodigious vitality ; 
this immense swarm of life ; these busy waters, crowding barges, 



160 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



^ 



swinging drawbridges, piled ancient gables, spacious markets 
teeming with people ; that ever-wonderful Jews' quarter^ that 
dear old world of painting and the past, j^et alive, and throb- 
bing, and palpable — actual, and 3'et passing before you swiftly 
and strangel}^ as a dream ! Of the many journeys of this 
Roundabout life, that drive through Amsterdam is to be spe- 
cially and gratefulh^ remembered. You have never seen the 
palace of Amsterdam, m}- dear sir? Wh}', there's a marble 
hall in that palace that will frighten you as much as an}- hall in 
Vathek, or a nightmare. At one end of that old, cold, glassy, 
glittering, ghostly, marble hall there stands a throne, on which 
a white marble king ought to sit with his white legs gleaming 
down into the white marble below, and his white eyes looking 
at a great white marble Atlas, who bears on his icy shoulders 
a blue globe as big as the full moon. If he were not a genie, 
and enchanted, and with a strength altogether h3'peratlantean, 
he would drop the moon with a shriek on to the white marble 
floor, and it would splitter into perdition. And the palace 
would rock, and heave, and tumble ; and the waters would 
rise, rise, rise ; and the gables sink, sink, sink ; and the barges 
would rise up to the chimneys ; and the water-souchee fishes 
would flap over the Boorapjes, where the pigeons and storks 
used to perch ; and the Amster, and the Rotter, and the Saar, 
and the Op, and all the dams of Holland would burst, and the 
Zuyder Zee roll over the dykes ; and you would wake out of 
3^our dream, and find 3'ourself sitting in 3^our arm-chair. 

Was it a dream? it seems like one. Have we been to Hol- 
land? have we heard the chimes at midnight at Antwerp? 
Were we realh' away for a week, or have I been sitting up in 
the room dozing, before this stale old desk? Here's the desk ; 
yes. But, if it has been a dream, how could I have learned to 
hum that tune out of Bhiorah? Ah, is it that tune, or myself 
that I am humming? If it was a dream, how comes this 3'ellow 
Notice des Tableaux du MusiiE d' Amsterdam avec facsimile 
DES MoNOGRAMMES befoTc me, and this signature of the 
gallant 

BARTHOLOMEUS VANDER HELST, FECIT Ao, 1648. 

Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday ; it lasted a 
whole week. With the exception of that little pint of amari 
aliquid at Rotterdam, we were all ver3' happ3^ We might have 
gone on being happy for whoever knows how man3' da3'S more ? 
a week more, ten da3^s more : who knows how long that dear 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. HU 

teetotum happiness can be made to spin without tonpHnff 
over ? life 

But one of the party had desired letters to be sent postc 
restante, Amsterdam. The post-office is hard by that iwful 
palace where the Atlas is, and which we really saw. 

There was only one letter, you see. Only one chance of 
finding us. There it was. " The post has only this moment 
come in," says the smirking commissioner. And he hands 
over the paper, thinking he has done something clever. 

Before the letter had been opened, I could read Come back, 
as clearly as if it had been painted on the wall. It was all 
over. The spell was broken. The sprightly little holiday fairy 
that had frisked and gambolled so kindly beside us for eight 
days of sunshine — or rain which was as cheerful as sunshme 
— gave a parting piteous look, and whisked away and vanished. 
And yonder scuds the postman, and here is the old desk. 



NIL NISI BONUM. 

Almost the last words which Sir Walter spoke to Lockbart, 
his biographer, were, "Be a good man, my dear! "and with 
the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell 
to his family, and p;assed away blessing them. 

Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the 
Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time.* Ere a few weeks are 
over, man}^ a critic's pen will be at work, reviewing their lives, 
and passing judgment on their works. This is no review, or 
history, or criticism : onl}^ a word in testimon}^ of respect and 
regard from a man of letters, who owes to his own professional 
labor the honor of becoming acquainted with these two eminent 
literary men. One was the first ambassador whom the New 
World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with 
the republic ; the pater patricB had laid his hand on the child's 
head. He bore Washington's name : he came amongst us 
bringing the kindest S3^mpath3^, the most artless, smiling good- 
will. His new countrj^ (which some people here might be 
disposed to regard rather superciliously) could send us, as he 
showed in his own person, a gentleman, who, though himself 

* Washington Irving died, November 28, 1859 ; Lord Macaulay died, 
December 28, 1859. 



162 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

born in no ver}^ high sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, 
witty, quiet ; and, sociall}^, the equal of the most refined Euro- 
peans. If Irving's welcome in England was a kind one, was it 
not also gratefully remembered ? If he ate our salt, did he not 
ipSLj us with a thankful heart? Who can calculate the amount 
of friendliness and good feeling for our country which this 
writer's generous and untiring regard for us disseminated in his 
own? His books are read by millions* of his countrymen, 
whom he has taught to love England, and why to love her. 
It would have been eas}'^ to speak otherwise than he did : to 
inflame national rancors, which, at the time when he first be- 
came known as a public writer, war had just renewed : to cr}' 
down the old civilization at the expense of the new ; to point 
out our faults, arrogance, short-comings, and give the republic 
to infer how much she was the parent state's superior. There 
are writers enough in the United States, honest and otherwise, 
who preach that kind of doctrine. But the good Irving, the 
peaceful, the friendl}^ had no place for bitterness in his heart, 
and no scheme but kindness. Received in England with ex- 
traordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, Southe}', Byron, 
a hundred others have borne witness to their liking for him), he 
was a messenger of good-will and peace between his country 
and ours. "See, friends! " he seems to say, "these English 
are not so wicked, rapacious, callous, proud, as 3'ou have been 
taught to believe them. I went amongst them a humble man ; 
won m}^ wa}^ by ni}' pen ; and, when known, found ever3' hand 
held out to me with kindliness and welcome. Scott is a great 
man, you acknowledge. Did not Scott's King of England give 
a gold medal to him, and another to me, your countryman, and 
a stranger ? " 

Tradition in the United States still fondly retains the history 
of the feasts and rejoicings which awaited Irving on his return 
to his native country from Europe. He had a national wel- 
come ; he stammered in his speeches, hid himself in confusion, 
and the people loved him all the better. He had worthilj- 
represented America in Europe. In that young community a 
man who brings home with him abundant European testimonials 
is still treated with respect (I have found American writers, of 
wide-world reputation, strangel}^ solicitous about the opinions 
of quite obscure British critics, and elated or depressed by 
their judgments) ; and Irving went home medalled by the King, 
diplomatized b}^ the University, crowned and honored and ad- 

* See his Life in the most remarkable Dictionart/ of Authors, published 
lately at Philadelphia, by IVIr. Allibone, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 163 

mired. He had not in any wa}^ intrigued for his honors, he 
iiad fairly won them ; and, in Irving's instance, as in others, 
the old country was glad and eager to pay them. 

In America the love and regard for Irving was a national 
sentiment. Party wars are perpetually raging there, and are 
carried on by the press with a rancor and fierceness against 
individuals which exceed British, almost Irish, virulence. It 
seemed to me, during a year's travel in the country, as if no 
one ever aimed a blow at Irving. All men held their hand 
from that harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the good for- 
tune to see him at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and 
Washington,* and remarked how in everyplace he was honored 
and welcome. Every large city has its '' Irving House." The 
countiy takes pride in the fame of its men of letters. The gate 
of his own charming little domain on the beautiful Hudson 
River was for ever svvinging before visitors who came to him. 
He shut out no one.f I had seen man}- pictures of his house, 
and read descriptions of it, in both of which it was treated with 
a not unusual American exaggeration. It was but a pretty 
little cabin of a place ; the gentleman of the press who took 
notes of the place, whilst his kind old host was sleeping, might 
have visited the whole house in a couple of minutes. 

And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr. 
Irving's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, na}', mil- 
lions, when his profits were known to be large, and the habits 
of life of the good old bachelor were notoriously modest and 
simple? He had loved once in his life. The lady he loved 
died ; and he, whom all the world loved, never sought to re- 
place her. I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity 
has touched me. Does not the ver}^ cheerfulness of his after 
life add to the pathos of that untold story? To grieve always 
was not in his nature ; or, when he had his sorrow, to bring all 



* At Washington, Mr. Irving came to a lecture given by the writer, 
which Mr. Filmore and General Pierce, the President and President Elect, 
were also kind enough to attend together. " Two Kings of Brentford 
smelling at one rose," says Irving, looking up with his good-humored smile. 

t Mr. Irving described to me, with that humor and good-humor which 
he always kept, how, amongst otlier visitors, a member of the British press 
who had carried his distinguished pen to America (where he employed it in 
vilifying his own country) came to Sunnyside, introduced himself to Irving, 
partook of his wine and luncheon, and in two days described Mr. Irving, 
his house, his nieces, his meal, and his manner of dozing afterwards, in a 
New York paper. On another occasion, Irving said, laughing, " Two per- 
sons came to me, and one held me in conversation whilst the other mis- 
creant took my portrait ! " 



164 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



1 



II 



the world in to condole with him and bemoan it. Deep and 
quiet he lays the love of his heart, and buries it ; and grass and 
flowers grow over the scarred ground in due time. 

Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, be- 
cause there was a great number of people to occupy them. He 
could only afford to keep one old horse (which, lazy and aged 
as it was, managed once or twice to run awa}- with that careless 
old horseman). He could only afford to give plain sherry to 
that amiable British paragraph-monger from New York, Who _ 
saw the patriarch asleep over his modest, blameless cup, andSI 
fetched the public into his private chamber to look at him. 
Irving could only live very modestl}', because the wifeless, 
childless man had a number of children to whom he was as a 
father. He had as many as nine nieces, I am told — I saw two 
of these ladies at his house — with all of whom the dear old 
man had shared the produce of his labor and genius. 

'''' Be a good man^ my dear.'^ One can't but think of these 
last words of the veteran Chief of Letters, who had tasted and 
tested the value of worldly success, admiration, prosperit3\ 
Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the 
best part? In his family, gentle, generous, good-humored, 
affectionate, self-denying : in society, a delightful example of 
complete gentlemanhood ; quite unspoiled by prosperity ; never 
obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, 
as some public men are forced to be in his and other countries) ; 
eager to acknowledge ever}- contemporary's merit ; always kind 
and affable to the young members of his calling ; in his profes- 
sional bargains and mercantile deaUngs dehcately honest and 
grateful ; one of the most charming masters of our lighter lan- 
guage ; the constant friend to us and our nation ; to men of 
letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius merely, but as 
an exemplar of goodness, probity, and pure life: — I don't 
know what sort of testimonial will be raised to him in his own 
countr}^, where generous and enthusiastic acknowledgment of 
American merit is never wanting : but Irving was in our ser- 
vice as well as theirs ; and as they have placed a stone at 
Greenwich yonder in memory of that gallant young Bellot, who 
shared the perils and fate of some of our Arctic seamen, I would 
like to hear of some memorial raised by English writers and 
friends of letters in affectionate remembrance of the dear and 
good Washington Irving. 

As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some 
few most dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring 
readers deplore, our republic has already decreed his statue, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 165 

and he must have known that he had earned this posthumous 
honor. He is not a poet and man of letters merelj^ but citizen 
statesman, a great British worthy. Almost from the first 
moment when he appears, amongst bo3's, amongst college stu- 
dents, amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great 
Englishman. All sorts of successes are easy to him : as a lad 
he goes down into the arena with othei-s, and wins all the prizes 
to which he has a mind. A place in the senate is straightway 
offered to the young man. He takes his seat there ; he speaks, 
when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but not with- 
out party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. 
Still he is poet and philosopher even more than orator. That 
he may have leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, 
he absents himself for a while, and accepts a richly-remunerative 
post in the East. As learned a man may live in a cottage or a 
college common-room ; but it always seemed to me that ample 
means and recognized rank were Macaulay's as of right. Years 
ago there was a wretched outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay 
dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he was staying. 
Immortal gods ! Was this man not a lit guest for any palace 
in the world? or a fit companion for any man or woman in it? 
I dare say, after Austerlitz, the old K. K. court officials and 
footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating from Schonbrunn. But 
that miserable ' ' Windsor Castle " outcry is an echo out of fast- 
retreating old-world remembrances. The place of such a natural 
chief was amongst the first of the land ; and that country is 
best, according to our British notion at least, where the man 
of eminence has the best chance of investing his genius and 
intellect. 

If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or 
two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angr}- at the incon- 
testable superiorit}^ of the very tallest of the party ; and so I 
have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's 
superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and 
so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will 
not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to lis- 
ten ? To remember the talk is to wonder : to think not only 
of the treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had 
stored there, and could produce with equal readiness. Almost 
on the last day I had the fortune to see him, a conversation 
happened suddenly to spring up about senior wi-anglers, and 
what they had done in after fife. To the almost terror of the 
persons present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler of 
1801-2-3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and relating 



166 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



1 



his subsequent career and rise. Every man who has known 
him has liis stor^' regarding that astonishing memor}'. It may 
be tliat he was not ill pleased that you should recognize it ; but 
to those prodigious intellectual feats, which were so eas}' to 
him, who would grudge his tribute of homage? His talk was, 
in a word, admirable, and we admired it. 

Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord Macaula}', 
up to the day when the present lines are written (the 9th of 
January), the reader should not deny himself the pleasure of 
looking especially at two. It is a good sign of the times when 
such articles as these (I mean the articles in The Times and 
Saturday Revieiv) appear in our public prints about our public 
men. They educate us, as it were, to admire rightlj'. An 
uninstructed person in a museum or at a concert may pass by 
without recognizing a picture or a passage of music, which the 
connoisseur by his side ma}- show him is a masterpiece of har- 
mony, or a wonder of artistic skill. After reading these papers 
you like and respect more the person you have admired so much 
ah'eady. And so with regard to Macaulay's style there may be 
faults of course — what critic can't point them out? But for 
the nonce we are not talking about faults : we want to say nil 
nisi buuam. Well — take at hazard any three pages of the 
'' Essays " or '-'- History ; " — and, glimmering below the stream 
of the narrative, as it were, you, an average reatler, see one, 
two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, 
characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. 
Why is this epithet used ? Whence is that simile drawn ? How 
does he manage, in two or three words, to paint an individual, 
or to indicate a landscape? Your neighbor, who has his read- 
ing, and his little stock of literature stov/ed away in his mind, 
shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating 
not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, 
but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of 
this gi'eat schokii'. Me reads twenty books to write a sentence ; 
he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description. 

Many Londoners — not all — have seen the British Museum 
Library. I speak a rceur ouvert., and pray the kindl}' reader to 
bear with me. I have seen all sorts of domes of Peters and 
Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon, — what not? — and have been struck 
by none of them so much as by that catholic dome in Blooms- 
bury, under which our million \olumes are housed. What peace, 
what love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, 
what' generous kinduess for you and me, are here spread out! 
It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place without a 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 167 

heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my o-race 
at the table, and to have thanked heaven for this my English 
birthright, freely to partake of these bouutitul books, and to 
speak the truth I tind there. Under the dome which held 
Macaulay's brain, and from which his solemn eyes looked out 
on the world but a fortnight since, what a vast, briUiant, and 
wonderful store of learning was ranged ! what strange lore 
would he not fetch for you at your bidding ! A volume of law, 
or history, a book of poetry- familiar or forgotten (except by 
himself who forgot nothing), a novel ever so old, and he had it 
at hand. I spoke to him once about " Clarissa." " Not read 

* Clarissa!*" he cried out. "If you have once thoroughly 
entered on ' Clarissa ' and are infected by it, you can't leave it. 
When I was in India I passed one hot season at the hills, and 
there were the Governor-General, and the Secretary of Govern- 
ment, and the Commander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had 

* Clarissa ' with me : and, as soon as the}' began to read, the 
whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Har- 
lowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace ! The 
Governor's wife seized the book, and the Secretary waited for 
it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for tears ! " He acted 
the whole scene: he paced up and down the " Athenueum " 
library : I dare say he could have spoken pages of the book — 
of that book, and of what countless piles of others ! 

In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi bonum. 
One paper I have read regarding Lord Macaula}- says '' he had 
no heart." Wh}-, a man's books may not always speak the 
truth, but they speak his mind in spite of himself: and it seems 
to me this man's heart is beating through every page he penned. 
He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation against wrong, 
craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic resistance ; how he backs 
and applauds freedom struggling for its own ; how he hates 
scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful; how he recog- 
nizes genius, though selfish villains possess it ! The critic who 
says Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had none : 
and two men more generous, and more loving, and more hat- 
ing, and more partial, and more noble, do not live in our history. 
Those who knew Lord Macaulay knew how admirably tender 
and generous,* and affectionate he was. It was not his business 
to bring his family before the theatre footlights, and call for 
bouquets from the' gallery as he wept over them. 

* Since the above was written, I have been informed tliat it has been 
found, on examining Lord Macaulay's papers, that lie was m tlie habit ol 
giving away more than a fourth jjurt of his annual income. 



1(38 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



^ 



If any young man of letters reads this little sermon — and 
to him, indeed, it is addressed — I would say to him, "Bear 
Scott's words in your mind, and ' he good^ my dear.' " Here 
are two literar}^ men gone to their account, and, laus Deo^ as 
far as we know, it is fair, and open, and clean. Here is no need 
of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which 
would have been virtues but for unavoidable &c. Here are two 
examples of men most differently gifted : each pursuing his 
calling ; each speaking his truth as God bade him ; each honest 
in his life ; just and irreproachable in his dealings ; dear to his 
friends ; honored b}' his countrj- ; beloved at his fireside. It 
has been the fortunate lot of both to give incalculable happiness 
and delight to the world, which thanks them in return with an 
immense kindliness, respect, affection. It ma}^ not be our 
chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or re- 
warded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are 
rewards paid to our service. We ma}^ not win the b^ton or 
epaulettes j but God give us strength to guard the honor of the 
flag ! 



ON HALF A LOAF. 

A LETTER TO MESSRS. BROADWAY, BATTERY AND CO., OF NEW 

YORK, BANKERS. 

Is it all over ? May we lock up the case of instruments ? 
Have we signed our wills ; settled up our affairs ; pretended to 
talk and rattle quite cheerfull}^ to the women at dinner, so that 
they should not be alarmed ; sneaked away under some pretext, 
and looked at the children sleeping in their beds with their 
little unconscious thumbs in their mouths, and a flush on the 
soft-pillowed cheek ; made every arrangement with Colonel 
MacTurk, who acts as our second, and knows the other prin- 
cipal a great deal too well to think he will ever give in ; in- 
vented a monstrous figment about going to shoot pheasants 
with Mac in the morning, so as to soothe the anxious fears of 
the dear mistress of the house ; early as the hour appointed 
for the — the little affair — was, have we been awake hours 
and hours sooner ; risen before da3'light, with a faint hope, 
perhaps, that MacTurk might have come to some arrangement 
with the other side ; at seven o'clock (confound his punctu- 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 169 

ality !) heard his cab- wheel at the door, and let him in lookino- 
perfectly trim, fresh, jolly, and well shaved ; driven off with 
him in the cold morning, after a very unsatisfactory breakfast 
of coffee and stale bread-and-butter (which choke, somehow 
in the swallowing) ; driven off to Wormwood Scrubs in the 
cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny morning ; stepped out of tlie 
cab, where Mac has bid the man to halt on a retired spot in 
the common; in one minute more, seen another cab arrive, 
from which descend two gentlemen, one of whom has a case 
like MacTurk's under his arm ; — looked round and round the 
solitude, and seen not one single sign of a policeman — no, no 
more than in a row in London ; — deprecated the horrible 
necessity which drives civilized men to the use of powder and 
bullet ; — taken ground as firmly as may be, and looked on 
whilst Mac is neatly loading his weapons ; and when all ready, 
and one looked for the decisive One, Two, Three — have we 
even heard Captain O'Toole (the second of the other principal) 
walk up, and say: " Colonel MacTurk, I am desired by my 
principal to declare at this eleventh — this twelfth hour, that 
he is willing to own that he sees he has been wrong in the 
dispute which has arisen between him and your friend ; that 
he apologizes for offensive expressions which he has used in 
tlie heat of the quarrel ; and regrets the course he has taken ? " 
If something like this has happened to 3'ou, however great 
your courage, you have been glad not to fight ; — however 
accurate your aim, you have been pleased not to fire. 

On the sixth day of January in this year sixt3'-two, wliat 
hundreds of thousands — I may saj', what millions of English- 
men, were in the position of the personage here sketched — 
Christian men, I hope, shocked at the dreadful necessit}^ of 
battle ; aware of the horrors which the conflict must produce, 
and yet feeling that the moment was come, and that there was 
no arbitrament left but that of steel and cannon ! My reader, 
perhaps, has been in America. If he has, he knows what 
good people are to be found there ; how polished, how gener- 
ous, how gentle, how courteous. But it is not the voices of 
these 3^ou hear in the roar of hate, defiance, foil}', falsehood, 
which comes to us across the Atlantic. You can't hear gentle 
voices ; ver}^ many who could speak are afraid. Men must 
go forward, or be crushed by the maddened crowd behind them. 
I suppose after the perpetration of that act of— what shall we 
call it? — of sudden war, which Wilkes did, and Everett ap- 
proved, most of us believed that battle was inevitable. Who 
has not read the American papers for six weeks past? Did 



170 ROUl^ABOUT PAPERS. 

3'ou ever think the United States Government would give up 
those Commissioners? I never did, for my part. It seems 
to me the United States Government have done the most 
courageous act of the war. Before that act was done, what 
an excitement prevailed in London ! In ever}" Club there was 
a parliament sitting in permanence : in every domestic gather- 
ing this subject was sure to form a main part of the talk. Of 
course I have seen man}^ people who have travelled in America, 
and heard them on this matter — friends of the South, friends 
of the North, friends of peace, and American stockholders in 
plent}'. — "They will never give up the men, sir," that was 
the opinion on all sides ; and, if they would not, we knew what 
was to happen. 

For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us. 
The City was alread}^ gloomy enough. When a great domestic 
grief and misfortune visits the chief person of the State, the 
heart of the people, too, is sad and awe-stricken. It might 
be this sorrow and trial were but presages of greater trials 
and sorrow to come. What if the sorrow of war is to be added 
to the other calamit}^? Such forebodings have formed the 
theme of manj' a man's talk, and darkened many a fireside. 
Then came the rapid orders for ships to arm and troops to 
depart. How man}' of us have had to sa}' farewell to friends 
whom dut}' called away with their regiments ; on whom we 
strove to look cheerfull}', as we shook their hands, it miglit be 
for the last time ; ancl whom our thoughts depicted, tread- 
ing the snows of th.e immense Canadian frontier, where their 
iqtrepid little band might have to face the assaults of other 
enemies than winter and rough weather ! I went to a play one 
night, and protest I hardlj- know what was the entertainment 
which passed before m}^ eyes. In the next stall was an Ameri- 
can gentleman, who knew me. " Good heavens, sir," I thought, 
*' is it decreed that you and I are to be authorized to murder 
each other next week ; that ray people shall be bombarding 
your cities, destroying your navies, making a hideous desolation 
of your coast ; that our peaceful frontier shall be subject to 
fire, rapine, and murder?" "They will never give up the 
men," said the Englishman. " Thej^ will never give up the 
men," said the American. And the Christmas piece which 
the actors were pla3'ing proceeded like a piece in a dream. 'J'o 
make the grand comic performance doubl}^ comic, ray neighbor 
presently informed me how ong of the best friends I had in 
America — the most hospitable, kindly, amiable of men, from 
whom I had twice received the warmest welcome and the most 



I! 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 171 

delightful hospitality — was a prisoner in Fort Warren, on 
charges by which his Ufe perhaps might be risked. I tiiink 
that was the most dismal Christmas fun which these eyes ever 
looked on. 

Carry out that notion a little farther, and depict ten thou- 
sand, a hundred thousand homes in England saddened by the 
thought of the coming calamity, and oppressed by the pervad- 
ing gloom. My next-door neighbor perhaps has parted with her 
son. Now the ship in which he is, with a thousand brave com- 
rades, is ploughing through the stormy midnight ocean. Pres- 
enth' (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which her 
boy forms a speck, is winding its wa}- through the vast Canadian 
snows. Another neighbor's bo}' is not gone, but is expecting 
orders to sail ; and some one else, besides the circle at home 
maybe, is in prayer and terror, thinking of the summons which 
calls the young sailor away. Bv firesides modest and splendid, 
all over the three kingdoms, that sorrow is keeping watch, and 
myriads of hearts beating with that thought, '* Will they give 
up the men ? " 

I don't know how, on the first day after the capture of the 
Southern Commissioners was announced, a rumor got abroad 
in London that the taking of the men was an act according to 
law, of which our nation could take no notice. It was said 
that the law authorities had so declared, and a very noble testi- 
mony to the loyally of Englishmen, I think, was shown by the 
instant submission of high-spirited gentlemen, most keenly 
feeling that the nation had been subject to a coarse outrage, 
who were silent when told that the law was with the aggressor. 
The rehef which presently came, when, after a pause of a day, 
we found that law was on our side, was indescribable. The 
nation might then take notice of this insult to its honor. Never 
were people more eager than ours when the}^ found they had 
a right to reparation. 

I have talked during the last week with many English 
holders of American securities, who, of course, have been 
aware of the threat held over them. ''England," says the 
Nsw York Herald^ " cannot afford to go to war with us, for six 
hundred millions' worth of American stock is owned by British 
subjects, which, in event of hostilities, would be confiscated; 
and we now call upon the Companies not to take it off their 
hands on any terms. Let its forfeiture be held over England as 
a weapon in terrorern. British subjects have V^o or three hun- 
dred millions of dollars invested in shipping and other property 
in the United States. All this property, together with the stocks, 



172 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

would be seized, amounting to nine hundred millions of dollars.] 
Will England incur this tremendous loss for a mere abstrac- 
tion ? " 

Whether ' ' a mere abstraction " here means the abstraction! 
of the two Southern Commissioners from under our flag or the 
abstract idea of injured honor, which seems ridiculous to the^ 
Herald^ is it needless to ask. I have spoken with many men 
who have money invested in the States, but I declare I have 
not met one English gentleman whom the publication of this 
threat has influenced for a moment. Our people have nine 
hundred millions of dollars invested in the United States, have 
they ? And the Herald ' ' calls upon the Companies " not to take 
any of this debt ofl" our hands. Let us, on our side, entreat 
the English press to give this announcement ever}^ publicit}'. 
Let us do everj'thiug in our power to make this " call upon the _, 
Americans" well known in England. I hope English news-^l 
paper editors will print it, and print it again and again. It 
is not we who saj^ this of American citizens, but American citi- 
zens who say this of themselves. "Bull is odious. We can't 
bear Bull. He is haught}", arrogant, a braggart, and a blus- 
terer ; and we can't bear brag and bluster in our modest and 
decorous countr3\ We hate Bull, and if he quarrels with us^, 
on a point in which we are in the wrong, we have goods of his" 
in our custody, and we will rob him ! " Suppose your London 
banker saying to 3'ou, " Sir, I have always thought ^'our man- 
ners disgusting, and your arrogance insupportable. You dare 
to complain of my conduct because I have wrongfully impris- 
oned Jones. My answer to your vulgar interference is, that I 
confiscate your balance ! " 

What would be an English merchant's character after a few 
such transactions ? It is not improbable that the moralists of 
the Herald would call him a rascal. Wh}' have the United States 
been paying seven, eight, ten per cent for money for 3"ears past, 
when the same commodity can be got elsewhere at half that 
rate of interest? Wh}^ because though among the richest pro- 
' prietors in the world, creditors were not sure of them. So the 
States have had to pa}' eightj- millions yearly for the use of 
money which would cost other borrowers but thirty. Add up 
this item of extra interest alone for a dozen 3^ears, and see 
what a prodigious penaltv the States have been pa3ing for re- 
pudiation here and there, for sharp practice, for doubtful credit. 
Suppose the peace is kept between us, the remembrance of this 
last threat alone will cost the States millions and millions more- 
If they must have mone3^, we must have a greater interest to 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 178 

insure our jeopardized capital. Do American Companies want 
to borrow money — as want to borrow they will? Mr. Brown 
show the gentleman that extract from the New York Herald 
which declares that the United States will confiscate private 
property in the event of a war. As the country newspapers 
say, "Please, country papers, copy this paragraph." And, 
gentlemen in America, when the honor of your nation is called 
in question, please to remember that it is the American press 
which glories in announcing that you are prepared to be 
rogues. 

And when this war has drained uncounted hundreds of mil- 
lions more out of the United States exchequer, will they be richer 
or more inclined to pay debts, or less willing to evade them, or 
more popular with their creditors, or more likely to get money 
from men whom they deliberately announce that they will cheat ? 
I have not followed the Herald on the ^' stone-ship" question — 
that great naval victory appears to me not less horrible and 
wicked than suicidal. Block the harbors for ever ; destroy the 
inlets of the commerce of the world ; perish cities, — so that 
we may wreak an injury on them. It is the talk of madmen, 
but not the less wicked. The act injures the whole Republic : 
but it is perpetrated. It is to deal harm to ages hence ; but 
it is done. The Indians of old used to burn women and their 
unborn children. This stone-ship business is Indian warfare. 
And it is performed by men who tell us eveiy week that they 
are at the head of civilization, and that the Old World is de- 
crepit, and cruel, and barbarous as compared to theirs. 

The same politicians who throttle commerce at its neck, and 
threaten to confiscate trust-money, sa}' that when the war is 
over, and the South is subdued, then the turn of the old country 
will come, and a direful retribution shall be taken for our con- 
duct. This has been the cry all through the war. " We should 
have conquered the South," says an American paper which I 
read this very day, " but for England." Was there ever such 
puling heard from men who have an army of a milUon, and who 
turn and revile a people who have stood as aloof from their 
contest as we have from the war of Troy? Or is it an outcry 
made with malice prepense ? And is the song of the New York 
Times a variation of the Herald tune? — " The conduct of the 
British in folding their arms and taking no part in the fight, has 
been so base that it has caused the prolongation of the war, and 
occasioned a prodigious expense on our part. Therefore, as we 
have British property in our hands, we &c. &c." The lamb 
troubled the water dreadfully, and the wolf, in a righteous in- 



174 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

dignation, "confiscated" him. Of course we have heard that 
at an undisturbed time Great Britain would never have dared to 
press its claim for redress. Did the United States wait until 
we were at peace with France before they went to war with us 
last? Did Mr. Seward yield the claim which he confesses to 
be just, until he himself was menaced with war? How long- 
were the Southern gentlemen kept in prison? What caused 
them to be set free ? and did the Cabinet of Washington see 
its error before or after the demand for redress ? * The captor 
was feasted at Boston, and the captives in prison hard by. If 
the wrong-doer was to be punished, it was Captain Wilkes who 
ought to have gone into limbo. At anj^ rate, as " the Cabinet 
of Washington could not give its approbation to the commander 
of the ' San Jacinto,' " wh}' were the men not sooner set free? 
To sit at the Tremont House, and hear the captain after dinner 
give hts opinion on international law, would have been better 
sport for the prisoners than the grim salle- a- manger at Fort 
Warren. 

I read in the commercial news brought by the " Teutonia," 
and published in London on the present 13th Januar}^ that the 
pork market was generally quiet on the 29th December last ; 
that lard, though with more activity, was heavy and decidedly 
lower ; and at Philadelphia, whiskey is steady and stocks firm. 
Stocks are firm : that is a comfort for the English holders, and 
the confiscating process recommended bj' the Herald is at least 
deferred. But presently comes an announcement which is not 
quite so cheering : — " The Saginaw Central Railway Company 
(let us call it) has postponed its Januar}^ dividend on account 
of the disturbed condition of public affairs." 

A la bonne heure. The bond- and share-holders of the Sagl- 

* "At tlie beginning of December the British fleet on the West Indian 
station mounted 850 guns, and comprised five liners, ten first-class frigates, 
and seventeen powerful corvettes. ... In little more than a month the 
fleet available for operations on the American shore had been mcA'e than 
doubled. Tlie reinforcements prepared at tlie various dockyards included 
two line-of-battle ships, twenty-nine magnificent frigates — such as the 
' Shannon,' the ' Sutlej,' the'Euryalus,' the ' Orlando,' the ' Galatea ; ' eight 
corvettes armed like the frigates in part, with 100- and 40- pounder Arm- 
strong guns ; and tlie two tremendous iron-cased ships, the ' Warrior ' and 
tlie 'Black Prince;' and their smaller sisters the 'Resistance' and the 
' Defence.' There was work to be done which might have delayed the 
commission of a few of these ships for some weeks longer ; but if the 
United States had chosen war instead of peace, the blockade of their coasts 
would have been supported by a steam fleet of more than sixty splendid 
ships, armed with 1,800 guns, many of them of the heaviest and most 
elective kind." — Saturday Review: Jan. 11. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 175 

naw must look for loss and depression in times of war. Thi^ 
is one of war's dreadful taxes and necessities ; and all sorts of 
innocent people must suffer by the misfortune. The corn was 
high at Waterloo when a hundred and fifty thousand men came 
and trampled it down on a Sabbath morning. There was no 
help for that calamity, and the Belgian farmers lost their crops 
for the year. Perhaps I am a farmer myself — an innocent 
colonus ; and instead of being able to get to church with my 
famil}^ have to see squadrons of French dragoons thundering 
upon my barley, and squares of English infantry forming and 
trampUng all over my oats. (By the way, in writing of 
"Panics," an ingenious writer in the Atlantic Magazine saj^s 
that the British panics at Waterloo were frequent and notori- 
ous.) Well, I am a Belgian peasant, and I see the British 
running away and the French cutting the fugitives down. What 
have I done that these men should be kicking down my peace- 
ful harvest for me, on which I counted to pay my rent, to feed 
my horses, my household, my children? It is hard. But it is 
the fortune of war. But suppose the battle over ; the French- 
man sa^'s, " You scoundrel ! why did you not take a part with 
me ? and why did you stand like a double-faced traitor looking 
on? I should have won the battle but for you. And I hereby 
confiscate the farm yo\x stand on, and you and your family may 
go to the workhouse." 

The New York press holds this argument over English peo- 
ple in terrorem. " We Americans maj^ be ever so wrong in the 
matter in dispute, but if you push us to a war, we will confiscate 
your English property." Ver}^ good. It is peace now. Con- 
fidence of course is restored between us. Our eighteen hun- 
dred peace commissioners have no occasion to open their 
mouths ; and the little question of confiscation is postponed. 
Messrs. Battery, Broadway and Co., of New York, have the 
kindness to sell my Saginaws for what they will fetch. I shall 
lose half my loaf very likely ; but for the sake of a quiet Hfe, 
let us give up a certain quantity of farinaceous food ; and half a 
loaf, you know, is better than no bread at all. 



176 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. — A STORY 

A LA MODE. • 

Part I. 

*' Every one remembers in the Fourth Book of the immortal 
poem of 3'our Blind Bard, (to whose sightless oubs no doubt 
Glorious Shapes were apparent, and Visions Celestial,) how 
Adam discourses to Eve of the Bright Visitors who hovered 
round their Eden — 



* Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.* 



Ml 



" ' How often,' saj^s Father Adam, ' from the steep of echo- 
ing hill or thicket, have we heard celestial voices to the mid- 
night air, sole, or responsive to each other's notes, singing ! ' 
After the Act of Disobedience, when the erring pair from Eden 
took their solitary way, and went forth to toil and trouble on 
common earth — though the Glorious Ones no longer were 
visible, you cannot sa}' the}' were gone. It was not that the 
Bright Ones were absent, but that the dim e3^es of rebel man no 
longer could see them. In 3'our chamber hangs a picture of one 
whom 3'ou never knew, but whom 3'ou have long held in tender- 
est regard, and who was painted for 3'ou b3' a friend of mine, 
the Knight of Plympton. She communes with 3'ou. She smiles 
on 3'ou. When your spirits are low, her bright e3'es shine on 
3'OU and cheer 3'ou. Her innocent sweet smile is a caress to you. 
She never fails to soothe 3'ou with her speechless prattle. You 
love her. She is alive with 3'OU. As 3'ou extinguish 3'our candle 
and turn to sleep, though 3^our e3'es see her not, is she not 
there still smiling? As 3'ou lie in the night awake, and think- 
ing of 3'our duties, and the morrow's inevitable toil oppressing 
the bus3^, wear3', wakeful brain as with a remorse, the crackling 
fire flashes up for a moment in the grate, and she is there, your 
little Beauteous Maiden, smiling with her sweet e3'es ! When 
moon is down, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn, when 
lids are closed, is she not there, the little Beautiful One, though 
invisible, present and smiling still? Friend, the Unseen Ones 
are round about us. Does it not seem as if the time were draw- 
ing near when it shall be given to men to behold them ? " 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 17T 

The print of which my friend spoke, and which, indeed, 
hangs in m^^ room, though he has never been there, is that 
charming little winter piece of Sir Joshua, representing the little 
Lad}^ Caroline Montague, afterwards Duchess of Buccleuch. 
She is represented as standing in the midst of a winter land- 
scape, wrapped in muff and cloak ; and she looks out of her 
picture with a smile so exquisite that a Herod could not see her 
without being charmed. 

" I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinto," I said to the person with 
whom I was conversing. (I wonder, by the way, that I was 
not surprised at his knowing how fond I am of this print.) 
" You spoke of the Knight of Plympton. Sir Joshua died, 
1792 : and 3'ou say he was your dear friend?" 

As I spoke I chanced to look at Mr. Pinto ; and then it 
suddenly struck me: Gracious powers? Perhaps j'ou are a 
hundred jestrs old, now I think of it. You look more than a 
hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old for what I 
know. Your teeth are false. One eye is evidently false. Can 
I say that the other is not ? If a man's age may be calculated 
by the rings round his eyes, this man ma}' be as old as Methu- 
selah. He has no beard. He wears a large curl}- glossj- brown 
wig, and his e,yebrows are painted a deep olive-green. It was 
odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, 
in these queer old chambers in Shepherd's Inn. 

Pinto passed a yellow bandanna handkerchief over his awful 
white teeth, and kept his glass eye steadily" fixed on me. " Sir 
Joshua's friend?" said he (you perceive, eluding my direct 
question). " Is not every one that knows his pictures Rey- 
nolds's friend ? Suppose I tell 3'ou that I have been in his paint- 
ing room scores of times, and that his sister The has made me 
tea, and his sister Toffy has made coffee for me? You will only 
say I am an old ombog." (Mr. Pinto, I remarked, spoke all 
languages with an accent equall}^ foreign.) " Suppose I tell 
3'ou that I knew Mr. Sam Johnson, and did not like him? that 
I was at that very ball at Madame Cornells', which you have 
mentioned in one of your little — what do you call them ? — 
bah ! my memory begins to fail me — in one of your httle 
Whirligig Papers ? Suppose I tell you that Sir Joshua has been 
here, in this very room? " 

" Have you, then, had these apartments for — more — than 
— seventy j-ears?" I asked. 

" They look as if they had not been swept for that time — 
don't they? Hey? I did not say that I had them for seventy 
years, but that Sir Joshua has visited me here." 

12 



178 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

"When?" I asked, ejdng the man sternly, for I began 
think he was an impostor. 

He answered me with a glance still more stern : " Sir Joshua 
Reynolds was here this very morning, with Angelica Kaufmann 
and Mr. Oliver Goldschmidt. He is still very much attaghed 
to Angelica, who still does not care for him. Because he is 
dead (and I was in the fourth mourning coach at his funeral) is 
that an}' reason wh}' he should not come back to earth again ? 
My good sir, you are laughing at me. He has sat man}' a time 
on that ver}^ chair which you are occup3ing. There are several 
spirits in the room now, whom you cannot see. Excuse me." 
Here he turned round as if he was addressing somebody, and 
began rapidl}^ speaking a language unknown to me. "It is 
Arabic," he said ; " a bad patois I own. I learned it in Bar- 
bar}', when I was a prisoner amongst the Moors. In anno 1609, 
bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen. Ha ! you doubt me : look at 
me well. At least I am like — " 

Perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which the 
figure of a man carrying a barrel formed the initial letter,* and 
which I copied from an old spoon now in my possession. As I 
looked at Mr. Pinto I do declare he looked so like the figure on 
that old piece of plate that I started and felt very uneasy. 
" Ha ! " said he, laughing through his false teeth (I declare they 
were false — I could see utterly toothless gums working up and 
down behind the pink coral), " you see I wore a beard den ; I 
am shafed now ; perhaps you tink I am a spoon. Ha, ha ! " 
And as he laughed he gave a cough which I thought would have 
coughed his teeth out, his glass eye out, his wig off, his very 
head off; but he stopped this convulsion by stumping across the 
room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink medicine, which, 
being opened, spread a singular acrid aromatic odor through 
the apartment ; and I thought I saw — but of this I cannot take 
an affirmation — a light green and violet flame flickering round 
the neck of the phial as he opened it. By the way, from the 
peculiar stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare- 
boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer 
had a wooden leg. Over the dust which lay quite thick on the 
boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat and 
pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression 
made by the wooden stump. I own I had a queer thrill as I 
saw that mark, and felt a secret comfort that it was not cloven. 

^In this desolate apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited 
me to see him, there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little 

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the vrork. 






ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 179 

table on which you might put a break fast- t,ra3^ and not a single 
other article of furniture. In the next room, the door of which 
was open, I could see a magnificent gilt dressing case, with 
some splendid diamond and ruby shirt-studs lying by it, and a 
chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently full of clothes. 

Remembering him in Baden-Baden in great magnificence, I 
wondered at his present denuded state. ''You have a house 
elsewhere, Mr. Pinto?" I said. 

"Many," says he. "I have apartments in many cities. 
I lock dem up, and do not carry mosh logish." 

I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I 
first met hmi, was bare, and had no bed in it. 

"There is, then, a sleeping-room be3'ond?" 

" This is the sleeping- room." (He pronounces it dis. Can 
this, by the way, give anj- clue to the nationality of this singu- 
lar man ?) 

"If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety 
couch ; if on the floor, a dust}' one." 

" Suppose I sleep up dere?" said this strange man, and he 
actual^ pointed up to the ceiling. I thought him mad, or what 
he himself called " an ombog." ''I know. You do not believe 
me ; for why should I deceive 3'ou ? I came but to propose a 
matter of business to you. I told 3'Ou I could give you the 
clue to the mystery of the Two Children in Black, whom you 
met at Baden, and 3'ou came to see me. If I told you you 
would not believe me. What for try and convinz you? Ha 
hey ? " And he shook his hand once, twice, thrice, at me, and 
glared at me out of his eye in a peculiar way. 

Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate 
account. It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye 
into my brain, whilst behind his glass eye there was a green 
illumination as if a candle had been ht in it. It seemed to me 
that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, sputter- 
ing, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced me back into 
one of the chairs — the broken one — out of which I had much 
difiicultvin scrambhng, when the strange glamour was ended. 
It seemed to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed m the 
broken chair, the man floated up to the ceiling, crossed his 
legs, folded his arms as if he was lying on a sofa, and grmned 
down at me. When I came to myself he was down from the 
ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken cane-bottomed chair, 
kindly enough — " Bah ! " said he, " it is the smell of my medi- 
cine. It often gives the vertigo. I thought you would have 
had a little fit. Come into the open air." And we went down 



180 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

the steps, and into Shepherd's Inn, where the setting sun was^ 
just sliining on the statue of Shepherd ; the laundresses were; 
traipsing about ; the porters were leaning against the railings ; 
and the clerks were placing at marbles, to my inexpressible 
consolation. 

" You said j^ou were going to dine at the ' Gray's-inn Coffee- 
house,' " he said. I was. I often dine there. There is ex- 
cellent wine at the ' ' Gray's-inn Coffee-house ; " but I declare 
I NEVER SAID SO. I was uot astoiiishcd at his remark ; no more 
astonished than if I was in a dream. Perhaps I was in a dream. 
Is life a dream ? Are dreams facts ? Is sleeping being really 
awake? I don't know. I tell you I am puzzled. I have read 
*' The Woman in White," " The Strange Story " — not to men- 
tion that story ' ' Stranger than Fiction " in the CornhiU Maga- 
zine — that storj' for which three credible witnesses are read}'^ 
to vouch. I have had messages from the dead ; and not only 
from the dead, but from people who never existed at all. I 
own I am in a state of much bewilderment : but, .if j^ou please, 
will proceed with my simple, my artless stor}'. 

Well, then. We passed from Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, 
and looked for a while at Woodgate's bric-k-brac shop, which 
I never can pass without delaying at the windows — indeed, if 
I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop, and let 
me have one look more at that delightful omnium gatherum. 
And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale's little shop, " No. 
47," which is also a favorite haunt of mine. 

Mr. Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged 
salutations, " Mr. Pinto," I said, " will you like to see a real 
curiosit}' in this curiositj' shop? Step into Mr. Gale's little 
back room." 

In that little back parlor there are Chinese gongs ; there are 
old Saxe and Sevres plates ; there is Furstenberg, Carl Theodor, 
Worcester, Amstel, Nankin and other jimcrocker^^ And in 
the corner what do you think there is ? There is an actual 
GUILLOTINE. If you doubt me, go and see — Gale, High 
Holborn, No. 47. It is a slim instrument, much slighter than 
those which they make now; — some nine feet high, narrow, 
a pretty piece of upholstery enough. There is the hook over 
which the rope used to play which unloosened the dreadful axe 
above ; and look ! dropped into the orifice where the head used 
to go — there is the axe itself, all rustj-, with a great notch 

IN THE blade. 

As Pinto looked at it — Mr. Gale was not in the room, I 
recollect ; happening to have been just called out b}^ a customer 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 181 

who offered him three pound fourteen and sixpence for a bhie 
Shepherd in pate tendre^ — Mr. Pinto gave a little start, and 
seemed crispe for a moment. Then he looked steadil}' towards 

one of those great porcelain stools which you see in gardens 

and — it seemed to me — I tell 3'ou I won't take m}- affidavit 

I ma}^ have been maddened bj^ the six glasses I took of that 
pink elixir — I may have been sleep-walking : perhaps am as I 
write now — I may have been under the influence of that as- 
tounding MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen — but I vow 
I heard Pinto say, with rather a ghastly grin at the porcelain 
stool, 

" Nay, nefer shague your gory locks at me, 
Dou canst not say I did it." 

(He pronounced it, by the way, I dit it, by which I know that 
Pinto was a German.) 

I heard Pinto say those very words, and sitting on the 
porcelain stool I saw, dimly at first, then with an awful dis- 
tinctness — a ghost — an eidolon — a form — a headless man 
seated, with his head in his lap, which wore an expression of 
piteous surprise. 

At this minute, Mr. Gale entered from the front shop to 
show a customer some delf plates ; and he did not see — but 
we did — the figure rise up from the porcelain stool, shake its 
head, which it held in its hand, and which kept its eyes fixed 
sadly on us, and disappear behind the guillotine. 

" Come to the ' Graj^'s-inn Coffee-house,' " Pinto said, " and 
I will tell 3^ou how the notch came to the axe.^^ And we walked 
down Holborn at about thirty-seven minutes past six o'clock. 

If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes 
the reader, I promise him that in the next chapter of this httle 
story he will be astonished still more. 



Part II. 



*' You will excuse me," I said, to my companion, "for re- 
marking, that when 3"0U addressed the individual sitting on the 
porcelain stool, with his head in his lap, 3-our ordinarily benevo- 
lent features " — (this I confess was a bouncer, for between 
ourselves a more sinister and ill-looking rascal than Mons. P. 
I have seldom set ej^es on) — "3'our ordinarily handsome face 
wore an expression that was by no means pleasing. You 



182 ROUNDABOUT TAPERS. 



H 



grinned at the individual just as you did at me when 3'ou went 
up to the cei — , pardon me, as I thought 3'ou did, when I fell 
down in a fit in your chambers ; " and I qualified m}' words in 
a great flutter and tremble ; I did not care to oflfend the man — 
I did not dare to offend the man. I thought once or twice of 
jumping into a cab, and flying ; of taking refuge in Day and 
Martin's Blacking Warehouse ; of speaking to a policeman, but 
not one would come. I was this man's slave. I followed him 
like his dog. I could not get away from him. So, you see, I 
went on meanl}^ conversing with him, and affecting a simpering 
confidence. I remember, when I was a little bo}' at school, go- 
ing up fawning and smiling in this wa3' to some great hulking 
bully of a sixth-form bo}'. So I said in a word, " Your ordi- 
narily handsome face wore a disagreeable expression," &c. 

*'It is ordinarily' very handsome," said he, with such a leer 
at a couple of passers-by, that one of them cried, " Oh, crike}'', 
here's a precious gu}' ! " and a child, in its nurse's arms, 
screamed itself into convulsions. "0^, oui^ che suis tres-choli 
gargon, Men peau^ cerdainement," continued Mr. Pinto ; " but 
you were right. That — that person vras not very well pleased 
when he saw me. There was no love lost between us, as 3'ou 
sa3' ; and the world never knew a more worthless miscreant. 
I hate him, vot/ez-vous? I hated him ahfe ; I hate him dead. 
I hate him man ; I kate him ghost : and he know it, and trem- 
ble before me. If I see him twenty tausend years hence — and 
why not? — I shall hate him still. You remarked how he was 
dressed ? " 

*'In black satin breeches and striped stockings; a white 
pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his 
hair in powder. He must have worn a pigtail — only — " 

" Only it was cut off Ha, ha, ha ! " Mr. Pinto cried, 3'ell- 
ing a laugh, which I observed made the policeman stare very 
much. "Yes. It was cut off by the same blow which took 
off the scoundrel's head — ho, ho, ho ! " And he made a circle 
with his hook-nailed finger round his ow^n yellow neck, and 
grinned with a horiible triumph. "I promise you that fellow 
was surprised when he found his head in the pannier. Ha ! 
ha ! Do you ever cease to hate those whom you hate? " — fire 
flashed terrifically from his glass eye, as he spoke — "or to 
love dose whom you once loved. Oh, never, never!" And 
here his natural eye was bedewed with tears. "But here we 
are at the ' Gray's-inn Coffee-house.' James, what is the 
joint?" 

That very respectful and eflScient waiter brought in the bill 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. l83 

of fare, and I, for my part, chose boiled leg of pork and pease- 
pudding, which my acquaintance said would do as well as 
'anything else ; though I remarked he only trifled with the pease- 
pudding, and left all the pork on the plate. In fact, he scarcely 
ate anything. But he drank a prodigious quantity of wine ; and 
I must say that mj^ friend Mr. Hart's port-wine is so good that 
I myself took ^ well, I should think, I took three glasses. Yes, 
three, certainh\ He — I mean Mr. P. — the old rogue, was 
insatiable : for we had to call for a second bottle in no time. 
When that was gone, my companion wanted another. A little 
red mounted up to his j-ellow cheeks as he drank the wine, and 
he winked at it in a strange manner. " I remember," said he, 
musing, " when port-wine was scarcely drunk in this country' 
— though the Queen liked it, and so did Harley ; but Boling- 
broke didn't — he drank Florence and Champagne. Dr. Swift 
put water to his wine. 'Jonathan,' I once said to him — 
but bah ! autres temps, autres tnceurs. Another magnum, 
James." 

This was all very well. " My good sir," I said, " it may 
suit you to order bottles of '20 port, at a guinea a bottle ; but 
that kind of price does not suit me. I only happen to have 
thirty-four and sixpence in mj' pocket, of which I want a shil- 
ling for the waiter, and eighteenpence for my cab. You rich 
foreigners and swells msiy spend what you like" (I had him 
there : for mj' friend's dress was as shabby as an old-clothes- 
man's) ; " but a man with a family, Mr. What-d'you-call'im, 
cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his 
dinner alone." 

"Bah!" he said. " Nunkey paj's for all, as you say. I 
will what you call stant the dinner, if 3'ou are so poor/'' and 
again he gave that disagreeable grin, and placed an odious 
crooked-nailed and by no means clean finger to his nose. But 
I was not so afraid of liim now, for we were in a public place ; 
and the three glasses of port- wine had, 3'ou see, given me 



courage. 



" What a pretty snuff-box ! " he remarked, as I handed him 
mine, which I am still old-fasiiioned enough to carr}'. It is a 
pretty okl gold box enough, but valuable to me especially as 
a relic of an old, old relative, whom I can just remember as 
a child, wiien she was very kind to me. " Yes ; a pretty box. 
I can remember when many ladies — most ladies, cariied a box 
— na}', two boxes — tahatilre, and bonbormiere. What lad}'' 
carries snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a 
lady in an assembly were to offer you 2i prise ? I can remember 



184 ROtJKD ABOUT PAPERS. 

a lady with such a box as this, with a tour^ as we used to cat 
it then ; with paniers^ with a tortoise-shell cane, with the pret- 
tiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world ! — ah ! that 
was a time, that was a time ! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee 
now in my mind's eye ! At Bungay on the Wavene}^ did I not 
walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not 
walk with thee then ? Do I not see thee still ? " 

This was passing strange. My ancestress — but there is 
no need to publish her revered name — did indeed live at Bun- 
gaj^ St. Marj^'s, where she lies buried. She used to walk with 
a tortoise-shell cane. She used to wear little black velvet 
shoes, with the prettiest high heels in the world. 

' ' Did you — did you — know, then, my great gr-ndm-ther ? " 
I said. 

He pulled up his coat-sleeve — ''Is that her name?" he 
said. 

"Eliza " 

There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature 
written in red on his arm. 

" Tou knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with 
his strange knack) ; " /knew her 3'oung and lovely. I danced 
with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ? " 

As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's maiden name. 

Her maiden name was Her honored married name 

was 

" She married your great gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won 
the Newmarket Plate," Mr. Pinto drj^ly remarked. 

Merciful powers ! I remember, over the old shagreen knife 
and spoon case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print 
by Stubbs of that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, 
and his fair hair flowing over his shoulders, was over the 
mantel-piece, and Poseidon won the Newmarket Cup in the 
year 1783! 

" Yes ; 3'ou are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury 
that very night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled 
with 3'our grandf , ha ! " 

As he said " Ha ! " there came three quiet little taps on the 
table — it is the middle table in the " Gray's-inn CoflTee-house," 
under the bust of the late Duke of W-11-ngt-n. 

" I fired in the air," he continued ; " did I not? " (Tap, tap, 
tap.) " Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three 
months afterwards. ' Captain Brown,' I said, ' who could see 
Miss Sm-th without lo\ing her ? ' She is there ! She is there ! ** 
(Tap, tap, tap.) " Yes, my first love — " 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 185 

But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows 
means " No." 

" I forgot," he said, with a faint bhish stealing over his wan 

features, " she was not my first love. In Germ in my own 

country — there was a 3'ouug woman — " 

Tap, tap, tap. There was here quite a lively little treble 
knock ; and when the old man said, " But I loved thee better 
than all the world, Eliza," the affirmative signal was briskly 
repeated. 

And this I declare upon my honor. There was, I have 
said, a bottle of port- wine before us — I should say a decanter. 
That decanter was lifted up, and out of it into our respective 
glasses two bumpers of wine were poured. I appeal to Mr. 
Hart, the landlord— I appeal to James, the respectful and 
intelligent waiter, if this statement is not true ? And when we 
had finished that magnum, and I said — for I did not now in 
the least doubt of her presence — " Dear gr-nny, may we have 
another magnum? " the table distinctly rapped " No." 

"Now, my good sir," Mr. Pinto said, who really began to 
be affected by the wine, " you understand the interest I have 

taken in you . I loved Eliza " (of course I don't mention 

family names). " I knew you had that box which belonged to 
her — I will give 3'ou what you like for that box. Name your 
price at once, and I pay you on the spot." 

" Why, when we came out, you said 3'ou had not sixpence 
in your pocket." 

' ' Bah ! give you anything you like — fifty — a hundred — 
a tausend pound." 

" Come, come," said I, " the gold of the box may be worth 
nine guineas, and the fagon we will put at six more." 

" One tausend guineas ! " he screeched. " One tausend and 
fifty pound, dere ! " and he sank back in his chair — no, by 
the way, on his bench, for he was sitting with his back to 
one of the partitions of the boxes, as I dare say James re- 
members. 

" Don't go on in this way," I continued, rather weakly, for I 
did not know whether I was in a dream. " If you offer me a 
thousand guineas for this box I must take it. Mustn't I, dear 
gr-nny ? " 

The table most distinctly said, "Yes;" and putting out 
his claws to seize the box, Mr. Pinto plunged his hooked nose 
into it, and eagerly inhaled some of my 47 with a dash of 
Hardman. 

"But stay, you old harpy!" I exclaimed, being now in a 



186 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

sort of rage, and quite familiar with him. " Where is the 
mone}^ ? Where is the check ? " 

" James, a piece of note-paper and a receipt stamp ! " 

*' This is all mighty well, sir," I said, " but I don't know 
you ; I never saw you before. I will trouble you to hand me 
that box back again, or give me a check with some known 
signature." 
, "Whose? Ha, Ha, HA!" 

The room happened to be very dark. Indeed, all the waiters 
were gone to supper, and there were only two gentlemen snor- 
ing in their respective boxes. I saw a hand come quivering 
down from the ceiling — a very prettj^ hand, on which was a 
ring with a coronet, with a lion rampant gules for a crest. I 
saw that hand take a dip of ink and write across the paper. Mr. 
Pinto, then, taking a gray receipt-stamp out of his blue leather 
pocket-book, fastened it on to the paper by the usual process ; 
and the hand then wrote across the receipt-stamp, went across 
the table and shook hands with Pinto, and then, as if waving 
him an adieu, vanished in the direction of the ceiling. 

There was the paper before me, wet with the ink. There 
was the pen which the hand had used. Does anybody doubt 
me? / have that pen now. A cedar-stick of a not uncommon 
sort, and holding one of Gillott's pens. It is in my inkstand 
now, I tell you. Anybody may see it. The handwriting on 
the check, for such the document was, was the writing of a 
female. It ran thus : — " London, midnight, March 31, 1862. 
Pay the bearer one thousand and fifty pounds. Rachel Sidonia. 
To Messrs. Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., London." 

"Noblest and best of women!" said Pinto, kissing the 
sheet of paper with much reverence. " My good Mr. Round- 
about, I suppose you do not question that signature ? " 

Indeed, the house of Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., is known 
to be one of the richest in Europe, and as for the Countess Ra- 
chel, she was known to be the chief manager of that enormously 
wealthy establishment. There was only one little difficulty, 
the Countess Rachel died last October. 

I pointed out this circumstance, and tossed over the paper 
to Pinto with a sneer. 

" G'est a brendre ou a laisser^" he said with some heat. 
' ' You literary men are all imbrudent ; but I did not tink you 
such a fool wie dis. Your box is not worth twent}" pound, and 
I offer you a tausend because I know you want money to pay 
dat rascal Tom's college bills." (This strange man actually 
knew that my scapegrace Tom has been a source of great ex- 




I 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 187 

pense and anno3'ance to me.) "You see monej' costs me 
nothing, and jou refuse to take it! Once, twice; will you 
take this check in exchange for your trumpery snuff-box? " 

What could I do? My poor granny's legacy was valuable 
and dear to me, but after all a thousand guineas are not to be 
had every day. "Be it a bargain," said I. " Shall we have 
a glass of wine on it? " says Pinto ; and to this proposal I also 
unwillingly acceded, reminding him, by the way, that he had 
not yet told me the story of the headless man. 

" Your poor gr-ndm-ther was right just now, when she said 
she was not my first love. 'Twas one of those banale expres- 
sions " (here Mr. P. blushed once more) "which we use to 
women. We tell each she is our first passion. They reply 
with a similar illusory formula. No man is any woman's first 
love ; no woman any man's. We are in love hi our nurse's 
arms, and women coquette with their ej-es before their tongue 
can form a word. How could 3- our lovely relative love me ? I 
was far, far too old for her. I am older than I look. I am so 
old that you would not believe ray age were I to tell you. I 
have loved many and many a woman before your relative. 
It has not always been fortunate for them to love me. Ah, 
Sophronia ! Round the dreadful circus where you fell, and 
whence I was dragged corpse-like b}- the heels, there sat mul- 
titudes more savage than the lions which mangled j^our sweet 
form ! Ah, tenez ! when we marched to the terrible stake to- 
gether at Valladolid — the Protestant and the J — But awa}' 
with memory ! Boy ! it was happy for th}- grandam that she 
lov»d me not. 

" During that strange period," he went on, " when the 
teeming Time was great with the revolution that was speedily 
to be born, I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my 
mahgned friend Cagliostro. Mesmer was one of our band. I 
seemed to occupy but an obscure rank in it : though, as you 
know, in secret societies the humble man may be a chief and 
director — the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen 
hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never 
mind my age. It boots not to tell it : why shall I expose my- 
self to your scornful incredulity — or reply to your questions in 
words that are familiar to you, but which yet you cannot un- 
derstand? Words are symbols of things which you know, 
or of things which you don't know. If 3'ou don't know them, 
to speak is idle." (Here I confess Mr. P. spoke for exactly 
thirty-eight minutes, about physics, metaphysics, language, the 



188 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



origin and destiny of man, during which time I was rather 
bored, and, to relieve my ennui ^ drank a half glass or so of 
wine.) " Love, friend, is the fountain of 3'outh ! It may not 
happen to me once — once in an age : but when I love, then I 
am young. I loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, 
I loved thee — ah, how fondl}' ! Wine, I sa}', more wine ! 
Love is ever 3'oung. I was a boy at the little feet of Bathilde 
de Bechamel — the fair, the fond, the fickle, ah, the false!" 
The strange old man's agony was here really terrific, and he 
showed himself much more agitated than he had been when 
speaking about m}^ gr-ndm-th-r. 

" I thought Blanche might love me. I could speak to her 
in the language of all countries, and tell her the lore of all ages. 
I could trace the nursery legends which she loved up to their 
Sanscrit source, and whisper to her the darkling mysteries of 
Egyptian Magi. I could chant for her the wild chorus that 
rang in the dishevelled Eleusinian revel : I could tell her and 
I would, the watchword never known but to one woman, the 
Saban Queen, which Hiram breathed in the abysmal ear of 
Solomon — You don't attend. Psha ! 3^ou have drunk too 
much wine ! " Perhaps I may as well own that I was not at- 
tending, for he had been canying on for about fifty-seven 
minutes ; and I don't like a man to have all the talk to him- 
self. 

" Blanche de Bechamel was wild, then, about this secret of 
Masonr3\ In early, early days I loved, I married a girl fair 
as Blanche, who, too, was tormented b}^ curiosity, who, too, 
would peep into my closet — into the only secret I guarded 
from her. A dreadful fate befell poor Fatima. An accident 
shortened her life. Poor thing ! she had a foolish sister who 
urged her on. I alwaj's told her to beware of Ann. She died. 
The}^ said her brothers killed me. A gross falsehood. Am I 
dead? If I were, could I pledge you in this wine?" 

*'Was your name," I asked, quite bewildered, " was 3^our 
name, pray, then, ever Blueb ?" 

" Hush ! the waiter will overhear you. Methought we were 
speaking of Blanche de Bechamel. I loved her, 3'oung man. 
My pearls, and diamonds, and treasure, xn.y wit, my wisdom, 
my passion, I flung them all into the child's lap. I was a fool. 
Was strong Samson not as weak as I? Was Solomon the 
Wise much better when Balkis wheedled him. I said to the 
king — But enough of that, I spake of Blanche de Bechamel. 

"Curiosity was the poor child's foible. I could see, as I 
talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my 



1 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 189 

friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know 
the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. 
With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, she strove to coax it 
from me — from me — ha ! ha ! 

*' I had an apprentice — the son of a dear friend, who died 
b}^ m}^ side at Rossbach, when Soubise, with whose army I 
happened to be, suffered a dreadful defeat for neglecting my 
advice. The young Chevalier Goby de Mouchy was°glad 
enough to serve as my clerk, and help in some chemical exper- 
iments in which I was engaged with my friend Dr. Mesmer. 
Bathilde saw this young man. Since women were, has it not 
been their business to smile and deceive, to fondle and lure ? 
Away ! From the very first it has been so ! " And as my 
companion spoke, he looked as wicked as the serpent that 
coiled round the tree, and hissed a poisoned counsel to the 
first woman. 

"One evening I went, as was my wont, to see Blanche. 
She was radiant ; she was wild with spirits : a sauc}^ triumph 
blazed in her blue eyes. She talked, she rattled in her chiklish 
way. She uttered, in the course of her rhapsod}-, a hint — an 
intimation — so terrible that the truth flashed across me in a 
moment. Did I ask her? She would lie to me. But I know 
how to make falsehood impossible. Aad I ordered her to go to 
sleep." 

At this moment the clock (after its previous convulsions) 
sounded Twelve. And as the new Editor* of the Oornhill 
Magazine — and Ae, I promise 3' ou, won't stand any nonsense 
— will only allow seven pages, I am obliged to leave ofl" at the 

TERY MOST INTERESTING POINT OF THE StORY. 



Part III. 

*' Are you of our fraternity? I see j^ou are not. The secret 
which Mademoiselle de Bechamel confided to me in her mad 
triumph and wild hoyden spirits — she was but a child, poor 
thing, poor thing, scarce fifteen ; — but I love them young — 
a folly not unusual with the old ! " (Here Mr. Pinto thrust his 
knuckles into his hollow eyes ; and, I am sorry to say, so little 
regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears made 

* Mr. Thackeray retired from the Editorship of the Cornhill Magazim 
in March, 1862. 



190 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

streaks of white over his gnarled dark hands.) "Ah, at fif- 
teen, poor child, thy fate was terrible ! Go to ! It is not good 
to love me, friend. The}' prosper not who do. I divine you. 
You need not sa}^ what you are thinking — " 

In truth, I was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sallow 
hook-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirt}', hideous old man, 
with the sham teeth, the}' have a queer taste. That is what I 
was thinking. 

' ' Jack Wilkes said the handsomest man in London had but 
half an hour's start of him. And witiK>ut vanity, I am scarce!}' 
uglier than Jack Wilkes. We were members of the same club 
at Medenham Abbey, Jack and I, and had many a merry night 
together. Well, sir, I — Mary of Scotland knew me but as 
a little hunchbacked music-master ; and yet, and yet, I think 
she was not indifferent to her David Riz — and she came to mis- 
fortune. They all do — they all do ! " 

"Sir, you are wandering from your point!" I said, with 
some severity. For, reall}', for this old humbug to hint that 
he had been the baboon who frightened the club at Medenham, 
that he had been in the Inquisition at Valladolid — that under 
the name of D. Riz,. as he called it, he had known the lovely 
Queen of Scots — was a little too much. " Sir," then 1 said, 
" you were speaking about a Miss de Bechamel. I really have 
not time to hear all your biography." 

" Faith, the good wine gets into my head." (I should think 
so, the old toper! Four bottles all but two glasses.) "To 
return to poor Blanche. As I sat laughing, joking with her, 
she let slip a word, a little word, which filled me with dismay. 
Some one had told her a part of the Secret — the secret which 
has been diA'ulged scarce thrice in three thousand years — the 
Secret of the Freemasons. Do you know what happens to 
those uninitiate who learn that secret? to those wretched men, 
the 'initiate who reveal it?" 

As Pinto spoke to me, he looked through and through me 
with his horrible piercing glance, so that I sat quite uneasily 
on my bench. He continued : ' ' Did I question her awake ? 
I knew she would lie to me. Poor child ! I loved her no less 
because I did not believe a word she said. I loved her blue 
eye, her golden hair, her delicious voice, that was true in song, 
though when she spoke, false as Eblis ! You are aware that I 
possess in rather a remarkable degree what we have agreed to 
call the mesmeric power. I set the unhappy girl to sleep. 
Then she was obliged to tell me all. It was as I had surmised. 
Goby de Mouchy, my wretched, "besotted, miserable secretary, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 191 

in his visits to the chateau of the Marquis de Bechamel, who 
was one of our society, had seen Blanche. I suppose it was 
because she had been warned that he was worthless, and poor, 
artful and a coward, she loved him. She wormed out of the 
besotted wretch the secrets of our Order. ' Did he tell you the 

NUMBER ONE? ' I askcd. 

" She said, ' Yes.' 

" ' Did he,' I further inquired, ' tell you the — ' 

" ' Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me ! ' she said, writhing on 
the sofa, where she lay in the presence of the Marquis de 
Bechamel, her most unhappy father. Poor Bechamel, poor 
Bechamel! How pale he looked as I spoke! 'Did he tell 
you,' I repeated with a dreadful calm, 'the number two?' 
She said, ' Yes.' 

" The poor old marquis rose up, and clasping his hands, 

fell on his knees before Count Cagl Bah ! I went by a 

different name then. Vat's in a name? Dat vich ve call a 
Rosicrucian by any other name vil smell as sveet. ' Mon- 
sieur,' he said, ' I am old — I am rich. 1 have five hundred 
thousand livres of rentes in Picardy. I have half as much in 
Artois. I have two hundred and eio^htv thousand on the Grand 
Livre. I am promised by my Sovereign a dukedom and his 
orders with a reversion to my heir. I am a Grandee of Spain 
of the First Class, and Duke of Volovento. Take my titles, 
my ready monej^, my life, m}^ honor, everj'thing I have in the 
world, but don't ask the third question.' 

" ' Godefroid de Bouillon, Comte de Bechamel, Grandee of 
Spain and Prince of Volovento, in our Assembly what was the 
oath you swore ? ' " The old man writhed as he remembered 
its terrific purport. 

"Though my heart was racked with agony, and I would 
have died, ay, cheerfully" (died, indeed, as if that were a pen- 
alty !) "to spare j^onder lovely child a pang, I said to her 
calmly, ' Blanche de Bechamel, did Goby de Mouchy tell you 
secret number three ? ' 

" She whispered a out that was quite faint, faint and small. 
But her poor father fell in convulsions at her feet. 

" She died suddenly that night. Did I not tell you those I 
love come to no good ? When General Bonaparte crossed the 
Saint Bernard, he saw in the convent an old monk with a 
white beard, wandering about the corridors, cheerful and rather 
stout, but mad — mad as a March hare. ' General,' I said to 
him, ' did you ever see that face before?' He had not. He 
had not mnigled much with the higher classes of our society 




192 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

before the Revolution, /knew the poor old man well enough ; 
he was the last of a noble race, and I loved his child." 

" And did she die* by — ? " 

"Man! did I say so? Do I whisper the secrets of the 
Vehragericht? I say she died that night: and he — he, the ||| 
heartless, the villain, the betrayer, — j^ou saw him seated in 
yonder curiosity-shop, by yonder guillotine, with his scoun- 
drelly head in his lap. 

' ' You saw how slight that instrument was ? It was one of 
the first which Guillotin made, and which he showed to private 
friends in a hangar in the Rue Picpus, where he lived. The 
invention created some little conversation amongst scientific 
men at the time, though I remember a machine in Edinburgh of 
a very similar construction, two hundred — well, many, many 
years ago — and at a breakfast which Guillotin gave he showed 
us the instrument, and much talk arose amongst us as to 
whether people suffered under it. 

' ' And now I must tell yoxa what befell the traitor who had 
caused all this suffering. Did he know that the poor child's 
death was a sentence ? He felt a cowardly satisfaction that 
with her was gone the secret of his treason. Then he began to 
doubt. I had means to penetrate all his thoughts, as well as 
to know his acts. Then he became a slave to a horrible fear. 
He fled in abject terror to a convent. The}^ still existed in 
Paris ; and behind the walls of Jacobins the wretch thought 
himself secure. Poor fool ! I had but to set one of m}^ som- 
nambulists to sleep. Her spirit went forth and spied the shud- 
dering wretch in his cell. She described the street, the gate, 
the convent, the very dress which he wore, and which you saw 
to-day. 

"And now this is what happened. In his chamber in the 
Rue St. Honore, at Paris, sat a man alone — a man who has 
been maligned, a man who has been called a knave and char- 
latan, a man who has been persecuted even to the death, it is 
said, in Roman Inquisitions, forsooth, and elsewhere. Ha ! 
ha ! A man who has a mighty will. 

" And looking towards the Jacobins Convent (of which, from 
his chamber, he could see the spires and trees) , this man willed. 
And it was not yet dawn. And he willed ; and one who was 
l3ang in his cell in the convent of Jacobins, awake and shud- 
dering with terror for a crime which he had committed, fell 
asleep. 

" But though he was asleep his eyes were open. 

" And after tossing and writhing, and clinging to the pallet, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 193 

and saying, ' No, I will not go,' he rose up and donned his 
clothes — a gi-ay coat, a vest of white pique, black satin small- 
clothes, ribbed silk stockings, and a white stock with a steel 
buckle ; and he arranged his hair, and he tied his queue, all 
the while being in that strange somnolence which walks, which 
moves, which flies sometimes, which sees, which is indifferent 
to pain, which obeys. And he put on his hat, and he went 
forth from his cell ; and though the dawn was not yet, he trod 
the corridors as seeing them. And he passed into the cloister, 
and then into the garden where lie the ancient dead. And he 
came to the wicket, which Brother Jerome was opening just at 
the dawning. And the crowd was already waiting with their 
cans and bowls to receive the alms of the good brethren. 

" And he passed through the crowd and went on his way, 
and the few people then abroad who marked him, said, ' Tiens ! 
How very odd he looks ! He looks like a man walking in his 
sleep ! ' This was said by various persons : — 

"By milk- women, with their cans and carts, coming into 
the town. 

"By roysterers who had been drinking at the taverns of 
the Barrier, for it was Mid-Lent. 

"B}^ the sergeants of the watch, who eyed him sternly as 
he passed near their halberds. 

" But he passed on unmoved b}^ their halberds, 

" Unmoved by the cries of the roysterers, 

' ' By the market-women coming with their milk and eggs. 

" He walked through the Rue St. Honore, I say : — 

" By the Rue Rambuteau, 

" By the Rue St. Antoine, 

" By the King's Chateau of the Bastille, 

" By the Faubourg St. Antoine. 

"And he came to No. 29 in the Rue Picpus — a house 
which then stood between a court and garden — 

"That is, there was a building of one story, with a great 
coach-door. 

" Then there was a court, around which were stables, coach- 
houses, offices. 

"Then there was a house — a two-storied house, with a 
perron in front. , 

" Behind the house was a garden — a garden of two hundred 
and fifty French feet in length. 

" And as one hundred feet of France equal one hundred and 
six feet of England, this garden, my friends, equalled exactly 
two hundred and sixty-five feet of British measure. 

13 



194 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

" In the centre of the garden was a fountain and a statue — 
or, to speak more correctly, two statues. One was recumbent, 
— a man. Over him, sabre in hand, stood a woman. 

" The man was Olofernes. The woman was Judith. From 
the head, from the trunk, the water gushed. It was the taste 
of the doctor : — was it not a droll of taste ? 

"At the end of the garden was the doctor's cabinet of study. 
My faith, a singular cabinet, and singular pictures ! — 

' ' Decapitation of Charles Premier at Vitehall. 

" Decapitation of Montrose at Edimbourg. 

" Decapitation of Cinq Mars. When I tell you that he was 
a man of a taste, charming ! 

"Through this garden, by these statues, up these stairs, 
went the pale figure of him who, the porter said, knew the wa}' 
of the house. He did. Turning neither right nor left, he 
seemed to walk through the statues, the obstacles, the flower- 
beds, the stairs, the door, the tables, the chairs. 

' ' In the corner of the room was that instrument, which 
Guillotin had just invented and perfected. One day he was to 
la}' his own head under his own axe. Peace be to his name ! 
With him I deal not ! 

" In a frame of mahogany, neatly worked, was a board with 
a half-circle in it, over which another board fitted* Above was 
a heavy axe, which fell — 3'ou know how. It was held up by a 
rope, and when this rope was untied, or cut, the steel fell. 

" To the story which I now have to relate, you ma}' give 
credence, or not, as you will. The sleeping man went up to 
that instrument. 

" He laid his head in it, asleep." 

"Asleep?" 

' ' He then took a little penknife out of the pocket of his 
white dimity waistcoat. 

" He cut the rope asleep. 

" The axe descended on the head of the traitor and villain. 
The notch in it was made by the steel buckle of his stock, 
which was cut through. 

' ' A strange legend has got abroad that after the deed was 
done, the figure rose, took the head from the basket, walked 
forth through the garden, and by the screaming porters at the 
gate, and went and laid itself down at the Morgue. But for this 
I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. ' There are more 
things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in 
your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the 
chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, 



• ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 195 

and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu ! Remember me. 
Ha ! 'tis dawn," Pinto said. And he was gone. 

I am ashamed to say that my first movement was to clutch 
the cheque whicli he had left with me, and which I was deter- 
mined to present the very moment the bank opened. I know 
the importance of these things, and that men change their mind 
sometimes. I sprang through the streets to the great banking 
house of Manasseh in Duke Street. It seemed to me as if I 
actually flew as I walked. As the clock struck ten I was at the 
counter and laid down m}^ cheque. 

The gentleman who received it, who was one of the Hebrew 
persuasion, as were the other two hundred clerks of the estab- 
lishment, having looked at the draft with terror in his coun- 
tenance, then looked at me, then called to himself two of his 
fellow-clerks, and queer it was to see all their aquiline beaks 
over the paper. 

" Come, come ! " said I, " don't keep me here all day. Hand 
me over the mone}', short, if you please ! " for I was, 3'ou see, 
a little alarmed, and so determined to assume ^ome extra 
bluster. 

' ' Will 3' ou have the kindness to step into the parlor to the 
partners?" the clerk said, and I followed him. 

" What, again f " shrieked a bald-headed, red- whiskered gen- 
tleman, whom I knew to be Mr. Manasseh. " Mr. Salathiel, 
this is too bad ! Leave me with this gentleman, S." And the 
clerk disappeared. 

" Sir," he said, " I know how you came b}' this ; the Count 
de Pinto gave it you. It is too bad ! I honor my parents ; I 
honor thei?- parents ; I honor their bills ! But this one of grand- 
ma's is too bad — it is, upon my word, now ! She've been dead 
these five-and-thirty years. And this last four months she has 
left her burial-place and took to drawing on our 'ouse ! It's too 
bad, grandma ; it is too bad ! " and he appealed to me, and 
tears actually trickled down his nose. 

"Is it tiie Countess Sidonia's cheque or not?" I asked, 
haughtil}'. 

" But, I tell you, she's dead ! It's a shame ! — it's a shame ! 
— it is, grandmamma ! " and he cried, and wiped his great nose 
in his yellow pocket-handkerchief. ' ' Look year — will you take 
pounds instead of guineas ? She's dead, I tell you ! It's no go ! 
Take the pounds — one tausend pound ! — ten nice, neat, crisp 
hundred-pound notes, and go away vid you, do ! " 

" I will have my bond, sir, or nothing," I said ; and I put on 
an attitude of resolution which I confess surprised even myself. 



196 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



" Wery veil," he shrieked, with man}^ oaths, "then you 
shall have noting — ha, ha, ha ! — noting but a policeman ! Mr. 
Abednego, call a policeman ! Take that, you humbug and im- 
postor ! " and here, with an abundance of frightful language 
which I dare not repeat, the wealth^^ banker abused and defied 
me. 

Au bout du compte^ what was I to do, if a banker did not 
choose to honor a cheque drawn by his dead grandmother ? I 
began to wish I had ni}^ snuff-box back. I began to think I 
was a fool for changing that little old-fashioned gold for this slip 
of strange paper. 

Meanwhile the banker had passed from his fit of anger to a 
paroxysm of despair. He seemed to be addressing some person 
invisible, but in the room: "Look here, ma'am, j'ou've really 
been coming it too strong. A hundred thousand in six months, 
and now a thousand more ! The 'ouse can't stand it ; it wonH 
stand it, I say ! What? Oh ! mercy, merc}^ ! " 

As he uttered these words, A HAND fluttered over the 
table in tha air ! It was a female hand : that which I had seen 
the night before. That female hand took a pen from the green 
baize table, dipped it in a silver inkstand, and wrote on a 
quarter of a sheet of foolscap on the blotting-book, "How 
about the diamond robbery? If you do not paj^ I will tell him 
where the}" are." 

What diamonds? what robbery? what was this myster}-? 
That will never be ascertained, for the wretched man's demeanor 
instantly changed. " Certainly, sir; — oh, certainly," he said, 
forcing a grin. "How will you have the monej^, sir? All 
right, Mr. Abednego. This way out." 

"I hope I shall often see 3'ou again," I said; on which I 
own poor Manasseh gave a dreadful grin, and shot back into 
his parlor. 

I ran home, clutching the ten delicious, crisp hundred 
pounds, and the dear little fift}^ which made up the account. 
I flew through the streets again. I got to my chambers. I 
bolted the outer doors. I sank back in m}^ great chair, and 
slept. . . . 

My first thing on waking was to feel for my money. Perdi- 
tion ! Where was I ? Ha ! — on the table before me was m^' 
grandmother's snuflf-box, and by its side one of those awful — 
those admirable — sensation novels, which I had been reading, 
and which are full of delicious wonder. 

But that the guillotine is still to be seen at Mr. Gale's, 
No. 47, High Holborn, I give ^^ou my honor. I suppose I was 



i 



m 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 197 

dreaming about it. I don't know. Wliat is dreaming ? What 

is life? Why shouldn't I sleep on the ceiling? and am I 

sitting on it now, or on the floor? I am puzzled. But enout^h. 
If the fashion for sensation novels goes on, I tell you I will 
write one in fifty volumes. For the present, DIXI. But be- 
tween ourselves, this Pinto, who fought at the Colosseum, who 
was nearly being roasted by the Inquisition, and sang duets at 
Holyrood, I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits 
of Roundabout Papers. Et vous ? 



DE FINIBUS. 

When Swift was in love with Stella, and despatching her a 
letter from London thrice a month by the Irish packet, j^ou 
may remember how he' would begin letter No. xxiii., we will 
sa3% on the very day when xxii. had been sent away, stealing 
out of the coffee-house or the assembly so as to be able to 
prattle with his dear; "never letting go her kind hand, as it 
were," as some commentator or other has said in speaking 
of the Dean and his amour. When Mr. Johnson, walking to 
Dodsley's, and touching the posts in Pall Mall as he walked, 
forgot to pat the head of one of them, he went back and im- 
posed his hands on it, — impelled I know not by what supersti- 
tion. I have this I hope not dangerous mania too. As soon 
as a piece of work is out of hand, and before going to sleep, I 
like to begin another ; it may be to write only half a dozen 
lines : but that is something towards Number the Next. The 
printer's boy has not yet reached Green Arbor Court with the 
copy. Those people who were ahve half an hour since, Pen- 
dennis, Chve Newcome, and (what do you call him? what was 
the name of the last hero? I remember now !) Philip Firmin, 
have hardly drunk their glass of wine, and the mammas have 
only this minute got the children's cloaks on, and have been 
bowed out of my premises — and here I come back to the study 
again : tamen usque recurro. How lonely it looks now all these 
people are gone ! My dear good friends, some folks are utterly 
tired of you, and say, "What a poverty of friends the man 
has ! He is always asking us to meet those Pendennises, New- 
comes, and so forth. Why does he not introduce us to some 
new characters ? Why is he not thrilling like Twostars, learned 



198 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

and profound like Threestars, exquisitel}' humorous and hum^an 
like Fourstars? Wlw, finall}', is he not somebody else?" My 
good people, it is not only impossible to please 3'ou all, but it 
is absurd to try. The dish which one man devours, another 
dislikes. Is the dinner of* to-day not to j^our taste? Let us 
hope to-morrow's entertainment will be more agreeable. . . . 
I resume my original subject. What an odd, pleasant, humor- 
ous, melancholy feeling it is to sit in the study, alone and quiet, 
now all these people are gone who have been boarding and 
lodging -with me for twenty months ! They have interrupted 
my rest : they have plagued me at all sorts of minutes : they 
have thrust themselves upon me when I was ill, or wished to 
be idle, and I have growled out a " Be hanged to you, can't you 
leave me alone now?" Once or twice the}' have prevented my 
going out to dinner. Many and many a time they have pre- 
vented my coming home, because I knew they were there wait- 
ing in the study, and a plague take them ! and I have left home 
and famil}', and gone to dine at the Club, and told nobody 
where I went. They have bored me, those people. They have 
plagued me at all sorts of uncomfortable hours. They have 
made such a disturbance in my mind and house, that some- 
times I have hardl}' known what was going on in mj" family'', 
and scarcely have heard what m^' neighbor said to me. They 
are gone at last ; and you would expect me to be at ease ? Far 
from it. I should almost be glad if Woolcomb would walk in 
and talk to me ; or Twysden reappear, take his place in that 
chair opposite me, and begin one of his tremendous stories. 

Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conversations with, 
even draw the likeness of, people invisible to you and me. 
Is this making of people out of fanc}' madness? and are novel- 
writers at all entitled to strait-waistcoats? I often forget 
people's names in life ; and in my own stories contritel}' own 
that I make dreadful blunders regarding them ; but I declare, 
ni}' dear sir, with respect to the personages introduced into 
your humble servant's fables, I know the people utterly — I 
know the sound of their voices. A gentleman came in to see 
me the other day, who was so like the picture of Philip Firmin 
in Mr. Walker's charming drawings in the Cornhill Magazine^ 
that he was quite a curiositj' to me. The same e3'es, beard, 
shoulders, just as you have seen them from month to month. 
Well, he is not like the PhiUp Firmin in my mind. Asleep, 
asleep in the grave, lies the bold, the generous, the reckless, 
the tender-hearted creature whom I have made to pass through 
those adventures which have just been brought to an end. It 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 199 

is years since I heard the laughter ringing, or saw the bright 
blue eyes. When I knew him both were young. I become 
young as I think of him. And this morning he was alive 
again in this room, ready to laugh, to fight, to weep. As I 
write, do you know, it is the gray of evening ; the house is 
quiet ; everybody is out ; the room is getting a little dark, and 
I look rather wistfully up from the paper with perhaps ever so 
little fancy that HE MAY COME IN.— No? No move- 
ment. No gray shade, growing more palpable, out of which 
at last look the well-known eyes. No, the printer came and 
took him away with the last page of the proofs. And with 
the printer's boy did the whole cortege of ghosts flit away, 
invisible? Ha! stay! what is this? Angels and ministers of 
grace! The door opens, and a dark form — enters, bearing 
a black — a black suit of clothes. It is John. He saj's it is 
time to dress for dinner. 

• ••••••• 

Every man who has had his German tutor, and has been 
coached through the famous ' ' Faust " of Goethe (thou wert 
my instructor, good old Weissenborn, and these eyes beheld 
the great master himself in dear little Weimar town !) has read 
those charming verses which are prefixed to the drama, in 
which the poet reverts to the time when his work was first 
composed, and recalls the friends now departed, who once 
listened to his song. The dear shadows rise up around him, 
he says ; he lives in the past again. It is to-da}^ which ap- 
pears vague and visionar}'. We humbler writers cannot create 
Fausts, or raise up monumental works that shall endure for 
all ages ; but our books are diaries, in which our own feelings 
must of necessity be set down. As we look to the page written 
last month, or. ten years ago, we remember the day and its 
events ; the child ill, mayhap, in the adjoining room, and the 
doubts and fears which racked the brain as it still pursued its 
' work ; the dear old friend who read the commencement of the 
tale, and whose gentle hand shall be laid in ours no more. I 
own for ni}' part that, in reading pages which this hand penned 
formerly, I often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It is 
not the words I see ; but that past day ; that bygone page of 
life's history ; that tragedy, comedy it may be, which our little 
home company was enacting ; that merr3'-making which we 
shared ; that funeral which we followed ; that bitter, bitter 
grief which we buried. 

And, such being the state of my mind, I pray gentle readers 
to deal kindly with their humble servant's manifold short- 



200 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

comings, blunders, and slips of memory. As sure as I read 
a page of m}^ own composition, I find a fault or two, half a 
dozen. Jones is called Brown. Brown, who is dead, is 
brought to life. Aghast, and months after the number was 
printed, I saw that I had called Philip Firmin, Clive Newcome. 
Now Clive Newcome is the hero of another stor}^ by the reader's 
most obedient writer. The two men are as different, in my 
mind's e3"e, as — as Lord Palmerston and Mr. Disraeli let us 
ssij. But there is that blunder at page 990, line 76, volume 
84 of the Cornhill Magazine^ and it is past mending ; and I 
wish in m^^ life I had made no worse blunders or errors than 
that which is hereb^^ acknowledged. 

Another Finis written. Another mile-stone passed on this 
journey from birth to the next world ! Sure it is a subject for 
solemn cogitation. Shall we continue this story- telling busi- 
ness and be voluble to the end of our age? Will it not be 
presently time, O prattler, to hold 3'our tongue, and let younger 
people speak? I have a friend, a painter, who, like other 
persons who shall be nameless, is gi'owing old. He has never 
painted with such laborious finish as his works now show. 
This master is still the most humble and diligent of scholars. 
Of Art, his mistress, he is alwa3"s an eager, reverent pupil. 
In his calling, in yours, in mine, industrj' and humility will 
help and comfort us. A word with 3'ou. In a pretty large 
experience I have not found the men who write books superior 
in wit or learning to those who don't write at all. In regard 
of mere information, non- writers must often be superior to 
writers. You don't expect a lawyer in full practice to be con- 
versant with all kinds of literature ; he is too busy with his 
law ; and so a writer is commonly too busy with his own books 
to be able to bestow attention on the works of other people. 
After a day's work (in which I have been depicting, let us say, 
the agonies of Louisa on parting with the Captain, or the 
atrocious behavior of the wicked Marquis to Lady Emily) I 
march to the Club, proposing to improve my mind and keep 
myself "posted up," as the Americans phrase it, with the 
literature of the day. And what happens? Given, a walk 
after luncheon, a pleasing book, and a most comfortable arm- 
chair b3^ the fire, and you know the rest. A doze ensues. 
Pleasing book drops suddenty, is picked up once with an air 
of some confusion, is laid present^ softly in lap : head falls on 
comfortable arm-chair cushion : e3'es close : soft nasal music 
is heard. Am I telling Club secrets? Of afternoons, after 
lunch, I say, scores of sensible fogies have a doze. Perhaps 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 201 

1 have fallen asleep over that very book to which " Finis" has 
just been written. '' And if the writer sleeps, what happens 
to the readers?" says Jones, coming down upon me with his 
lightning wit. What? You did sleep over it? And a very 
good thing too. These eyes have more than once seen a friend 
dozing over pages which this hand has written. There is a 
vignette somewhere in one of my books of a friend so cauo-ht 
napping with " Pendennis," or the " Newcomes," in his lap; 
and if a writer can give you a sweet soothing, harmless sleep, 
has he not done you a kindness ? So is the author who excites 
and interests you worthy of your thanks and benedictions. I 
am troubled with fever and ague, that seizes me at odd inter- 
vals and prostrates me for a dsiy. There is cold fit, for which, 
I am thankful to say, hot brandy-and-water is prescribed, and 
this induces hot fit, and so on. In one or two of these fits I 
have read novels with the most fearful contentment of mind. 
Once, on the Mississippi, it was my dearly beloved "Jacob 
Faithful:" once at Frankfort O. M., the delightful " Vingi 
Ans Apres " of Monsieur Dumas : once at Tunbridge Wells, 
the thrilling ' ' Woman in White : " and these books gave me 
amusement from morning till sunset. I remember those ague 
fits with a gi'eat deal of pleasure and gratitude. Think of a 
whole day in bed, and a good novel for a companion ! No 
cares : no remorse about idleness : no visitors : and the Wom«i 
in White or the Chevalier d'Artagnan to tell me stories from 
dawn to night! "Please, ma'am, my master's compliments, 
and can he have the third volume?" (This message was sent 
to an astonished friend and neighbor who lent me, volume by 
volume, the W. in W,) How do you like your novels? I like 
mine strong, "hot with," and no mistake: no love-making: 
no observations about society : little dialogue, except where 
the characters are bullying each other : plenty of fighting : and 
a villain in the cupboard, who is to suffer tortures just before 
Finis. I don't like your melancholy Finis. I never read the 
historj^ of a consumptive heroine twice. If I might give a 
short hint to an impartial writer (as the Examiner used to say 
in old days) , it would be to act, not a la mode le pays de Pole 
(I think that was the phraseology), but always to give quarter. 
In the story of Philip, just come to an end, I have the permis- 
sion of the author to state, that he was going to drown the two 

villains of the piece — a certain Doctor F and a certain 

Mr. T. H on board the " President," or some other tragic 

ship — but you see I relented. I pictured to myself Firmin's 
ghastly face" amid the crowd of shuddering people on that reel- 



202 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

iDg deck in the lonely ocean, and thought, " Thou ghastly 
lying wretch, thou shalt not be drowned : thou shalt have a 
fever only ; a knowledge of thy danger ; and a chance — ever 
so small a chance — of repentance." I wonder whether he did 
repent when he found himself in the 3'ellow-fever, in Virginia ? 
The probability is, he fancied that his son had injured him very 
much, and forgave him on his death-bed. Do 3'ou imagine 
there is a great deal of genuine right-down remorse in the 
world? Don't people rather find excuses which make their 
minds easy ; endeavor to prove to themselves that they have 
been lamentably belied and misunderstood ; and try and for- 
give the persecutors who ivill present that bill when it is due ; 
and not bear malice against the cruel ruffian who takes them to 
the police-office for stealing the spoons ? Years ago I had a 
quarrel with a certain well-known person (I believed a state- 
ment regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and 
which turned out to be quite incorrect). To his dj'ing day 
that quarrel was never quite made up. I said to his brother, 
"Why is your brother's soul still dark against me? It is I 
who ought to be angry and unforgiving : for I was in the 
wrong." In the region which the}' now inhabit (for Finis has 
been set to the volumes of the lives of both here below), if 
they take any cognizance of our squabbles, and tittle-tattles, 
and gossips on earth here, I hope they admit that my little 
error was not of a nature unpardonable. If you have never 
committed a worse, m}'- good sir, surel}' the score against you 
will not be heav3\ Ha, dilectissimi fratres ! It is in regard of 
sins not found out that we may sa}^ or sing (in an undertone, 
in a most penitent and lugubrious minor key). Miserere nobis 
miseris peccatoribus. ^| 

Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not sel- - 
dom perpetrate, is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking,jBi 
against which, for m.^ part, I will offer up a special libera me. 
This is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, 
and instructors of young or old people. Na3'(for I am making 
a clean breast, and liberating my soul) , perhaps of all the novel- 
spinners now extant, the present speaker is the most addicted 
to preaching. Does he not stop perpetuall}' in his stor3' and 
begin to preach to 3'ou ? When he ought to be engaged with 
business, is he not for ever taking the Muse b3^ the sleeve, andjl 
plaguing her with some of his C3'nical sermons ? I cr3' peccavi 
loudly and heartil3'. I tell 3'ou I would like to be able to write 
a story which should show no egotism whatever — in which 
there should be no reflections, no cynicism, no vulgarit3^ (and 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 203 

so forth), but an incident in ever}- other page, a villain, a 
battle, a m3'stery in every chapter. I should like to be able to 
feed a reader so spicily as to leave him hungering aud thirstino- 
for more at the end of every monthly meal. 

Alexandre Dumas describes himself, when inventino- the 
plan of a work, as Mng silent on his back for two whole days 
on the deck of a yacht in a Mediterranean port. At the end 
of the two days he arose and called for dinner. In those two 
days he had built his plot. He had moulded a mighty clay, to 
be cast presently in perennial brass. The chapters, the char- 
acters, the incidents, the combinations were all arranged in the 
artist's brain ere he set a pen to paper. My Pegasus won't 
fly, so as to let me surve}^ the field below me. He has no 
wings, he is blind of one eye certainly, he is restive, stubborn, 
slow ; crops a hedge when he ought to be galloping, or gallops 
when he ought to be quiet. He never will show off when I 
want him. Sometimes he goes at a pace which surprises me. 
Sometimes, when I most wish him to make the running, the 
brute turns restive, and I am obliged to let him take his own 
time. I wonder do other novel-writers experience this fatalism ? 
They must go a certain wa}^ in spite of themselves. I have 
been surprised at the observations made by some of my char- 
acters. It seems as if an occult Power was moving the pen. 
The personage does or says something, and I ask, how the 
dickens did he come to think of that? Every man has re- 
marked in dreams, the vast dramatic power which is some- 
times evinced ; I won't say the surprising power, for nothing 
does surprise you in dreams. But those strange characters 
you meet make instant observations of which you never can 
have thought previously. In like manner, the imagination 
foretells things. We spake anon of the inflated style of some 
writers. What also if there is an afflated style, — when a 
writer is like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty 
words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and bellow- 
ing, and whistling, and moaning through the speaking pipes of 
his bodily organ? I have told you it was a very queer shock 
to me the other day when, with a letter of introduction in his 
hand, the artist's (not my) Philip Firmin walked into this 
room, and sat down in the chair opposite. In the novel of 
" Pendennis," written ten years ago, there is an account of a 
certain Costigan, whom I had invented (as I suppose authors 
invent their personages out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends 
of characters). I was smoking in a tavern parlor one night — 
and this Costigan came into the room alive — the very man : — 



204 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



\ 



the most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches of the 
man, of the rude drawings in which I had depicted him. He 
had the same little coat, the same battered hat, cocked on 
one e3'e, the same twinkle in that e3'e. " Sir," said I, know- 
ing him to be an old friend whom I had met in unknown 
regions, "sir," I said, " maj^ I offer you a glass of brandy- 
and-water?" " Bedad, ye may^" says he, " and ril sing ye a 
song tu." Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of course 
he had been in the ai-my. In ten minutes he pulled out an 
Arm}'^ Agent's account, whereon his name was written. A few 
months after we read of him in a police court. How had I i 
come to know him, to divine him? Nothing shall convince me 
that I have not seen that man in the world of spirits. In the 
world of spirits and water I know I did : but that is a mere 
quibble of words. I was not surprised when he spoke in an 
Irish brogue. I had had cognizance of him before somehow. 
Who has not felt that little shock which arises when a person, 
a place, some words in a book (there is always a collocation) 
present themselves to j'ou, and 3"ou know that 3'ou have before 
met the same person, words, scene, and so forth? 

The}' used to call the good Sir Walter the ' ' Wizard of the 
North." What if some writer should appear who can write so 
enchantingly that he shall be able to call into actual life the^j 
people whom he invents? What if Mignon, and Margaret, and 
Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now (though I don't saj' the}' 
are visible) , and Dugald Dalgett}- and Ivanhoe were to step in 
at that open window b}^ the little garden 3'onder? Suppose 
Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide silent 
in? Suppose Athos, iPorthos, and Aramis should enter with a 
noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest 
Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm ; and Tittlebat Titmouse, 
with his hair dyed green ; and all the Crummies compan}' of 
comedians, with the Gil Bias troop ; and Sir Roger de Coverle}' ; 
and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La 
Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to 3"0u, I look rather 
wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people. 
Were an}' of them to enter, I think I should not be very much 
frightened. Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have had 
with them ! We do not see each other very often, but when 
we do, we are ever happ3' to meet. I had a capital half-hour 
with Jacob Faithful last night ; when the last sheet was cor- 
rected, when " Finis" had been written, and the printer's bo}', 
with the cop3', was safe in Green Arbor Court. 

So you are gone, little printer's boy, with the last scratches 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 205 

and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis 
at the story's end. The last corrections? I sa}^ those last 
corrections seem never to be finished. A plague upon the 
weeds ! Every day, when I walk in my own little literary 
garden-plot, I spy some, and should like to have a spud, and 
root them out. Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy. 
That turning back to the old pages produces anything but 
elation of mind. Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able 
to cancel some of them ? Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old 
pages ! Oh, the cares, the ennui^ the squabbles, the repeti- 
tions, the old conversations over and over again ! But now 
and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear 
memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last : after 
which, behold Finis itself come to an end, and the Infinite 
begun. 



ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 

As some bells in a church hard b}^ are making a great holiday 
clanging in the summer afternoon, I am reminded somehow of 
a July da}^ a garden, and a great clanging of bells years and 
years ago, on the very day when George IV. was crowned. I 
remember a little bo}^ lying in that garden reading his first 
novel. It was called the " Scottish Chiefs." The little boy 
(who is now ancient and not little) read this book in the sum- 
mer-house of his great grandmamma. She was eighty 3^ears of 
age then. A most lovely and picturesque old lady, with a long 
tortoise-shell cane, with a little puflT, or tour^ of snow-white (or 
was it powdered?) hair under her cap, with the prettiest little 
black-velvet slippers and high heels you ever saw. She had a 
grandson, a lieutenant in the navy ; son of her son, a captain 
in the navy ; grandson of her husband, a captain in the navy. 
She lived for scores and scores of 3'ears in a dear httle old 
Hampshire town inhabited by the wives, widows, daughters of 
navy captains, admirals, lieutenants. Dear me ! Don't I re- 
member Mrs. Duval, widow of Admiral Duval ; and the Miss 
Dennets, at the Great House at the other end of the town. Ad- 
miral Dennet's daughters ; and the Miss Barrys, the late Cap- 
tain Barry's daughters ; and the good old Miss Maskews, 
Admiral Maskew's daughter ; and that dear Httle Miss Noi-val, 
and the kind Miss Bookers, one of whom married Captain, now 



206 rou:n^dabout papers. 

Admiral Sir Henr}' Excellent, K.C.B. ? Far, far awa}' into the 
past I look and see the little town with its friendl}^ glimmer. 
That town was so like a novel of Miss Austen's that I wonder 
was she born and bred there? No, we should have known, and 
the good old ladies would have pronounced her to be a little 
idle thing, occupied with her silly books and neglecting her 
housekeeping. There were other towns in England, no doubt, 
where dwelt the widows and wives of other nav}' captains ; 
where the}^ tattled, loved each other, and quarrelled ; talked 
about Betty the maid, and her fine ribbons indeed ! took their 
dish of tea at six, played at quadrille every night till ten, when 
there was a little bit of supper, after which Bett}' came with the 
lanthorn ; and next da}' came, and next, and next, and so foilh, 
until a daj" arrived when the lanthorn was out, when Betty came 
no more ; all that little compan}' sank to rest under the dai- 
sies, whither some folks will presentl}' follow them. How did 
they live to be so old, those good people? Moi qui vous park, 
I perfectly recollect old Mr. Gilbert, who had been to sea with 
Captain Cook ; and Captain Cook, as 3'ou justl}^ observe, dear 
Miss, quoting out of 3'our " MangnalFs Questions," was mur- 
dered hj the natives of Owli3'hee, anno 1779. Ah! don't you 
remember his picture, standing on the seashore, in tights and 
gaiters, with a musket in hi& hand, pointing to his people not to 
fire from the boats, whilst a great tattooed savage is going to 
stab him in the back? Don't 3'ou remember those houris 
dancing before him and the other officers at the great Otaheite 
ball? Don't you know that Cook was at the sie^e of Quebec, 
with the glorious Wolfe, who fought under the Duke of Cum- 
berland, whose ro3'al father was a distinguished oflScer at Ram- 
illies, before he commanded in chief at Dettingen? Huzza! 
Give it them, m3' lads ! M3^ horse is down? Then I know I 
shall not run awa^'. Do the French run ? then I die content. 
Stop. Wo ! Quo me rapis ? M3^ Pegasus is galloping oflT, 
goodness knows where, like his Majest3''s charger at Det- 
tingen. 

How do these rich historical and personal reminiscences . 
come out of the subject at present in hand? What is that sub- 
ject, b3' the wa3^? My dear friend, if you look at the last essa}'- 
kin (though 3'ou may leave it alone, and I shall not be in the 
least surprised or offended), if you look at the last paper, where 
the writer imagines Athos and Porthos> Dalgett3' and Ivanhoe, 
Amelia and Sir Charles Grandison, Don Quixote and Sir Roger, 
walking in at the garden-window, 3'ou will at once perceive that 
Novels and their heroes and heroines are our present subject 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 207 

■of discourse, into which we will presen% plunge. Are you one 
:of us, dear sir, and do you love novel-reading? To be re- 
|minded of your first novel will surely be a pleasure to you. 
|Hush ! I never read quite to the end of my first, the " Scottish 
[Chiefs." I couldn't. I peeped in an alarmed furtive manner at 
some of the closing pages. Miss Porter, like a kind dear tender- 
learted creature, would not have Wallace's head chopped off" at 
[the end of Vol. V. She made him die in prison,* and if I re- 
[member right (protesting I have not read the book for forty-two 
(or three years), Robert Bruce made a speech to his soldiers, in 
(which he said, "And Bannockburn shall equal Cambusken- 
|neth."t But I repeat I could not read the end of the fifth volume 
[of that dear delightful book for crying. Good heavens ! It 
[was as sad, as sad as going back to school. 

The glorious Scott cycle of romances came to me some four 
[or five years afterwards ; and I think boj's of our j^ear were 
[specially fortunate in coming upon those delightful books at 
that special time when we could best enjo}^ them. Oh, that 
{sunshiny bench on half- holidays, with Claverhouse or Ivanhoe 
|for a companion ! I have remarked of very late days some 
little men in a great state of delectation over the romances of 
[Captain Mayne Reid, and Gustave Aimard's Prairie and Indian 
[Stories, and during occasional holida}^ visits, lurking off to bed 
[with the volume under their arms. But are those Indians and 
[warriors so terrible as our Indians and warriors were? (I sa}^ 
ire they? Young gentlemen, mind, I do not say they are not.) 
"►ut as an oldster I can be heartil}^ thankful for the novels of 
Jthe 1-10 Geo. IV., let us say, and so downward to a period not 

* I find, on reference to the novel, that Sir William died on the scaf- 
fold, not in prison. His last words were, " * My prayer is heard. Life's 
2ord is cut by heaven. Helen ! Helen ! May heaven preserve my country, 
ind — ' He stopped. He fell. And with that mighty shock the scaffold 
shook to its foundations." 

t The remark of Bruce ( which I protest I liad not read for forty-two 
/^ears), I find to be as follows : — " When this was uttered by the English 
leralds, Bruce turned to Ruthven, with an heroic smile, ' Let him come, my 
)rave barons ! and he shall find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambus- 
kenneth ! ' " In the same amiable author's famous novel of " Thaddeus of 
Warsaw," there is more crying than in any novel I ever remember to have 
read. See, for example, the last page. ..." Incapable of speaking, Thad- 
deus led his wife back to her carriage. . . . His tears gushed out in spite 
of himself, and mingling with hers, poured those thanks, those assurances, 
of animated approbation through her heart, which made it even ache 
with excess of happiness." . . . And a sentence or two further. "Kos- 
ciusko did bless him, and embalmed the benediction with a shower of 
tears." 



208 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

unremote. Let us see ; there is, first, our dear Scott. A¥hom 
do I love in the works of that dear old master ? Amo — 

The Baron of Bradwardine and Fergus. (Captain Waverley 
is certainl}' verj^ mild.) 

Amo Ivanhoe ; LOCKSLEY ; the Templar. 

Amo Quentin Durward, and especially Quentin's uncle, who 
brought the boar to bay. I forget the gentleman's name. 

I have never cared for the Master of Ravenswood, or fetched 
his hat out of the water since he dropped it there when I last 
met him (circa 1825). 

Amo Saladin and the Scotch knight in the "Talisman." 
The Sultan best. 

Amo Claverhouse. 

Amo Major Dalgetty. Delightful Major. To think of him 
is to desire to jump up, run to the book, and get the volume 
down from the shelf. About all those heroes of Scott, what a 
manl}^ bloom there is, and honorable modesty ! The}' are not 
at all heroic. They seem to blush somehow in their position 
of hero, and as it were to say, " Since it must be done, here 
goes ! " They are handsome, modest, upright, simple, coura- 
geous, not too clever. If I were a mother (which is absurd), 
I should like to be mother-in-law to several young men of the 
Walter-Scott-hero sort. 

Much as I like those most unassuming, manly, unpretending 
gentlemen, I have to own that I think the heroes of another 
writer, viz. : — 

Leather-stocking , 

Uncas, 

Hardheart, 

Tom Coffin, 
are quite the equals of Scotf s men ; perhaps Leather-stocking 
is better than any one in " Scott's lot." La Longiie Carabine is 
one of the great prize-men of fiction. He ranks with 3'our Uncle 
Tob}', Sir Roger de Coverle}^, Falstaff — heroic figures, all — 
American or British, and the artist has deserved well of his 
country who devised them. 

At school, in m}^ time, there was a public da}', when the 
boys' relatives, an examining bigwig or two from the universities, 
old schoolfellows, and so forth, came to the place. The boys 
were all paraded ; prizes were administered ; each lad being in 
a new suit of clothes — and magnificent dandies, I promise you, 
some of us were. Oh, the chubby cheeks, clean collars, glossy 
new raiment, beaming faces, glorious in youth — Jit tueri codum 
— bright with truth, and mirth, and honor ! To see a hundi'ed 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 209 

bo3's marshalled in a chapel or old hall ; to hear their sweet 
fresh voices when they chant, and look in their bravo calm 
faces ; I say, does not the sight and sound of them smite 3'ou, 
somehow, with a pang of exquisite kindness ? . . . AVell. As 
about boys, so about Novelists. I fancy the bo3'^s of Parnassus 
School all paraded. I am a lower boy myself in that academy. 
I like our fellows to look well, upright, gentlemanlike. There 
is Master Fielding — he with the black eye. What a magnifi- 
cent build of a bo}' ! There is Master Scott, one of the heads 
of the school. Did you ever see the fellow more heart}- and 
manly? Yonder lean, shambling, cadaverous lad, who is 
alwa3^s borrowing mone}", telling lies, leering after the house- 
maids, is Master Laurence Sterne — a bishop's grandson, and 
himself intended for the Church ; for shame, 3'ou little repro- 
bate ! But what a genius the fellow has ! Let him have a 
sound flogging, and as soon as the young scamp is out of the 
whipping-room give him a gold medal. Such would be my 
practice if I were Doctor Birch, and master of the school. 

Let us drop this school metaphor, this birch and all pertain- 
ing thereto. Our subject, I beg leave to remind the reader's 
humble servant, is novel heroes and heroines. How do 3'ou 
like 3'our heroes, ladies? Gentlemen, what novel heroines do 
3'OU prefer? When I set this essay going, I sent the above 
question to two of the most inveterate novel-readers of m3^ 
acquaintance. The gentleman refers me to Miss Austen ; the 
lady says Athos, Guy Livingston, and (pardon my rosy blushes) 
Colonel Esmond, and owns that in youth she was ver}^ much in 
love with Valancourt. 

"Yalancourt? and who was he?" cry the young people. 
Valancourt, my dears, was the hero of one of the most famous 
romances which ever was published in this countr3^ The beaut3' 
and elegance of Valancourt made your young grandmammas' 
gentle hearts to beat with respectful sympath3^ He and liis 
glory have passed away. Ah, woe is me that the glory of 
novels should ever decay ; that dust should gather round them 
on the shelves ; that the annual cheques from Messieurs the 
publishers should dwindle, dwindle ! Inquire at Mudie's, or 
the London Library, who asks for the " Mysteries of Udolpho " 
now ? Have not even the ' ' Mysteries of Paris " ceased to 
frighten? Alas, our novels are but for a season ; and I know 
characters whom a painful modesty forbids me to mention, who 
shall go to limbo along with " Valancourt" and " Doricourt" 
and " Thaddeus of Warsaw." 

A dear old sentimental friend, with whom I discoursed on 

14 






^10 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

the subject of novels 3'esterday, said that her favorite hero was 
Lord Orville, in " Evelina," that novel which Dr. Johnson loved 
so. I took down the book from a dusty old cr3'pt at a club, 
where Mrs. Barbauld's noA'^elists repose : and this is the kind 
of thing, ladies and gentlemen, in which your ancestors found 
pleasure : — 

"And here, whilst I was looking for the books, I was fol- 
lowed b}^ Lord Orville. He shut the door after he came in, 
and, approaching me with a look of anxiety, said, ' Is this true, 
Miss Anville — are 3'ou going ? ' 

' I believe so, m^^ lord,' said I, still looking for the books. 
So suddenly, so unexpectedly : must I lose you? ' 

" 'No great loss, mj- lord,' said I, endeavoring to speak 
cheerfully. 

" ' Is it possible,' said he, gravely, ' Miss Anville can doubt 
my sincerity ? ' 

" ' I can't imagine,' cried I, ' what Mrs. Selwyn has done 
with those books.' 

" ' Would to heaven,' continued he, ' I might flatter myself 
3^ou would allow me to prove it ! ' 

" ' I must run up stairs,' cried I, greatly confused, ' and ask 
what she has clone with them.' 

" ' You are going then,' cried he, taking my hand, ' and you 
give me not the smallest hope of any return ! Will 3'ou not, m3" 
too lovel3' friend, will you not teach me, with fortitude like j^our 
own, to support 3^our absence?' 

" ' My lord,' cried I, endeavoring to disengage m3^ hand, 
' pray let me go ! ' 

" ' I will,' cried he, to m3^ inexpressible confusion, dropping 
on one knee, ' if 3^ou wish me to leave 3'ou.' 

" ' Oh, m3" lord,' exclaimed I, ' rise, I beseech 3^ou ; rise. 
Surel3^ 3'our lordship is not so cruel as to mock me.' 

" ' Mock 3'ou ! ' repeated he earnestl3^, ' no, I revere 3"0u. I 
esteem and admire 3'ou above all human beings ! You are the 
friend to whom m3' soul is attached, as to its better half. You 
are the most amiable, the most perfect of women ; and 3^ou are 
dearer to me than language has the power of telling.' 

' ' I attempt not to describe m^- sensations at that moment ; 
I scarce breathed ; I doubted if I existed ; the blood forsook 
my cheeks, and m3^ feet refused to sustain me. Lord Orville 
liastil3^ rising supported me to a chair upon which I sank almost 
lifeless. 

" I cannot write the scene that followed, though ever3" word 
is engraven on m3' heart ; but his protestations, his expressions, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 211 

were too flattering for repetition ; nor would he, in spite of my 
repeated efforts to leave him, suffer me to escape ; in short, 
my dear sir, I was not proof against his solicitations, and he 
drew from me the most sacred secret of my heart ! " * 

Other people may not much like this extract, madam, from 
3'our favorite novel, but when you come to read it, you will like 
it. I suspect that when 3^ou read that book which 3^ou so love, 
you read it a deux. Did you not yourself pass a winter at 
Bath, when you were the belle of the assembly? Was there 
not a Lord Orville in your case too? As 3'ou think of him 
eleven lustres pass awa3\ You look at him with the bright 
e^-es of those days, and your hero stands before you, the brave, 
the accomplished, the simple, the true gentleman ; and he 
makes the most elegant of bows to one of the most beautiful 
young women the world ever saw ; and he leads you out to the 
cotillon, to the dear unforgotten music. Hark to the horns of 
Elfand, blowing, blowing ! Bonne vieiUe, you remember their 
melody, and 3'our heart-strings thrill with it still. 

Of 3 our heroic heroes, I think our friend Monseigneur 
Athos, Count de la Fere, is my favorite. I have read about 
him from sunrise to sunset with the utmost contentment of 
mind. He has passed through how many volumes? Forty? 
Fifty? I wish for m3' part there were a hundred more, and 

* Contrast this old perfumed, powdered D'Arblay conversation with 
the present modern talk. If the two young people wished to hide their 
emotions now-a-days, and express themselves in modest language, the story 
would run : — 

" Whilst I was looking for the books. Lord Orville came in. He looked 
uncommonly down in the mouth, as he said : ' Is this true, Miss Anville ; 
are you going to cut 1 ' 

" ' To absquatulate, Lord Orville,' said I, still pretending that I was 
looking for the books. 

" * You are very quick about it,' said he. 

" * Guess it's no great loss,' I remarked, as cheerfully as I could. 

" ' You don't think I'm chaffing ? ' said Orville, with much emotion. 

" * What has Mrs. Selwyn done with the books ? ' I went on. 

" ' What, going 'i ' said he, ' and going for good ? I wish I was such a 
good-plucked one as you. Miss Anville,' " &c. 

The conversation, you perceive, might be easily written down to this 
key ; and if the hero and heroine were modern, they would not be suffered 
to go through their dialogue on stilts, but would converse in the natural 
graceful way at present customary. By the way, what a strange custom 
that is in modern lady novelists to make the men bully the women ! In the 
time of Miss Porter and Madame D'Arblay, we have respect, profound 
bows and curtsies, graceful courtesy, from men to women. In the time of 
Miss Bronte, absolute rudeness. Is it true, mesdames, that you like rude- 
ness, and are pleased at being ill-used by men ? I could point to more than 
one lady novelist who so represents you. 



212 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

would never tire of him rescuing prisoners, punishing ruflSans, 
and running scoundrels through the midriff with his most grace- 
ful rapier. Ah, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, jou. are a mag- 
nificent trio. I think I like d'Artagnan in his own memoirs 
best. I bought him j'ears and 3'ears ago, price fivepence, in a 
little parchment-covered Cologne-printed volume, at a stall in 
Gra3''s Inn Lane. Dumas glorifies him and makes a Marshal 
of him ; if I remember rightly, the original d'Artagnan was a 
needy adventurer, who died in exile ver3' earl}- in Louis XIV. *s 
reign. Did you ever read the "Chevalier d'Harmenthal ? " 
Did 3'ou ever read the " Tulipe Noire," as modest as a story by 
Miss Edgeworth? I think of the prodigal banquets to which 
this Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and wonder. 
To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me ! 
Where does he find the mone}' for these prodigious feasts? 
They sa}' that all the works bearing Dumas's name are not writ- 
ten by him. "Well ? Does not the chief cook have aides under 
him? Did not Rubens's pupils paint on his canvases? Had 
not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds? For m3'self, 
being also du metier, I confess I would often like to have a com- 
petent, respectable, and rapid clerk for the business part of m^- 
novels ; and on his arrival, at eleven o'clock, would sa}^ " Mr. 
Jones, if 3'ou please, the archbishop must die this morning in 
about five pages. Turn to article ' Drops3' ' (or what you will) 
in Enc3xlop8edia. Take care there are no medical blunders 
in his death. Group his daughters, physicians, and chaplains 
round him. In Wales's ' London,' letter B, third shelf, 3'ou will 
find an account of Lambeth, and some prints of the place. 
Color in with local coloring. The daughter will come down, 
and speak to her lover in his wherry at Lambeth Stairs," &c., 
&c. Jones (an intelligent young man) examines the medical, 
historical, topographical books necessar3^ ; his chief points out 
to him in Jeremy Ta3^1or (fol., London, m.dclv.) a few re- 
marks, such as might befit a dear old archbishop departing 
this life. When I come back to dress for dinner, the arch- 
bishop is dead on m3^ table in five pages ; medicine, topog- 
raph3^, theolog3', all right, and Jones has gone home to his 
family some hours. Sh' Christopher is the architect of St. 
Paul's. He has not laid the stones or carried up the mortar. 
There is a great deal of carpenter's and joiner's work in novels 
which surety a smart professional hand might supply. A smart 
professional hand ? I give 3'ou m3'^ word, there seem to me parts 
of novels — let us say the love-making, the "business," the 
vill^-jji m the cupboard, and so forth, which I should like to 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 213 

order John Footman to take in hand, as I desire him to bring 
the coals and poKsh the boots. Ask me indeed to pop a robber 
under a bed, to hide a will which shall be forthcoming in due 
season, or at my time of life to write a namb3^-pamb3' love con- 
versation between Emil}' and Lord Arthur ! I feel ashamed of 
myself, and especially when my business obliges me to do the 
love-passages, I blush so, though quite alone in my study, that 
you would fancy I was going off in an apoplexy. Are authors 
affected by their own works? I don't know about other 
gentlemen, but if I make a joke myself I cry; if I write a 
pathetic scene I am laughing wildly all the time — at least 
Tomkins thinks so. You know I am such a cjaiic ! 

The editor of the Gornhill Magazine (no soft and yielding 
character like his predecessor, but a man of stern resolution) 
will only allow these harmless papers to run to a certain length. 
But for this veto I should gladly have prattled over half a sheet 
more, and have discoursed on mau}^ heroes and heroines of 
novels whom fond memory brings back to me. Of these books 
I have been a diligent student from those early days, which are 
recorded at the commencement of this little essay. Oh, dehght- 
ful novels, well remembered ! Oh, novels, sweet and delicious 
as the raspbeny open-tarts of budding boyhood ! Do I forget 
one night after praj^ers (when we under-boys were sent to bed) 
lingering at m}' cupboard to read one little half-page more of 
my dear Walter Scott — and down came the monitor's dictionary 
upon my head ! Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, I have 
loved thee faithfully for forty years ! Thou wert twenty years 
old (say) and I but twelve, when I knew thee. At sixt}^ odd, 
love, most of the ladies of thy Orient race have lost the bloom 
of youth, and bulged beyond the line of beauty ; but to me 
thou art ever young and fair, and I will do battle with any 
felon Templar who assails thy fair name. 



ON A PEAR-TREE. 

A GRACIOUS reader no doubt has remsllked that these humble 
sermons have for subjects some little event which happens at 
^ the preacher's own gate, or which falls under his peculiar cog- 
nizance. Once, you may remember, we discoursed about a 
chalk-mark on the door. This morning Betsy, the housemaid, 



214 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

comes with a frightened look, and saj-s, "Law, mum! there's 
three bricks taken out of the garden wall, and the branches 
broke, and all the pears taken off the pear-tree ! " Poor peace- 
ful suburban pear-tree ! Gaol-birds have hopped about thy 
branches, and robbed them of their smoky fruit. But those 
bricks removed ; that ladder evidentl}^ prepared, by which un- 
known marauders ma}^ enter and depart from m}" httle English- 
man's castle ; is not this a subject of thrilling interest, and may 
it not he continued in a future number ? — that is the terrible 
question. Suppose, having escaladed the outer wall, the mis- 
creants take a fancy to storm the castle ? Well — well ! we 
are armed ; we are numerous ; we are men of tremendous 
courage, who will defend our spoons with our lives ; and there 
are barracks close by (thank goodness!) whence, at the noise 
of our shouts and firing, at least a thousand ba3'onets will bristle 
to our rescue. 

What sound is yonder? A church bell. I might go myself, 
but how listen to the sermon ? I am thinking of those thieves 
who have made a ladder of my wall, and a pre}' of m}' pear-tree. 
Thej^ ma}^ be walking to church at this moment, neatl}" shaved, 
in clean linen, with ever}' outward appearance of virtue. If I 
went, I know I should be watching the congregation, and think- 
ing, " Is that one of the fellows who came over my wall? " If, 
after the reading of the eighth Commandment, a man sang out 
with particular energ}', " Incline our hearts to keep this law," 
I should think, " Aha, Master Basso, did 3'ou have pears for 
breakfast this morning? " Crime is walking round me, that is 
clear. Who is the perpetrator? . . . What a changed aspect 
the world has, since these last few lines were written ! I have 
been walking round about my premises, and in consultation 
with a gentleman in a single-breasted blue coat, with pewter 
buttons, and a tape ornament on the collar. He has looked at 
the holes in the wall, and the amputated tree. We have formed 
our plan of defence — perhaps of attack. Perhaps some da}^ 
3^ou may read in the papers, " Daring Attempt at Burglary — 
Heroic Victory over the Villains," &c. &c. Rascals as yet 
unknown ! perhaps you, too, ma}' read these words, and may 
be induced to pause in your fatal intention. Take the advice 
of a sincere friend, and keep off. To find a man writhing in 
my man-trap, another mayhap impaled in my ditch, to pick off 
another from my tree (scoundrel ! as though he were a pear) 
will give me no pleasure; but such things may happen. Be 
warned in time, villains ! Or, if you must pursue your calling 
as cracksmen, have the goodness to try some other shutters. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 215 

Enough! subside into your darkness, children of night! 
Thieves I we seek not to have you hanged — j^ou are but as 
pegs whereon to hang others. 

I may have said before, that if I were going to be hanged 
m3^self, I think I should take an accurate note of my sensations, 
request to stop at some public-house on the road to Tyburn, 
and be provided with a private room and writing-materials, and 
give an account of my state of mind. Then, gee up, carter! 
I beg your reverence to continue jouy apposite, though not 
novel, remarks on my situation ; — and so we drive up to 
Tyburn turnpike, where an expectant crowd, the obliging 
sheriffs, and the dexterous and rapid Mr. Ketch are already in 
waiting. 

A number of laboring people are sauntering about our streets 
and taking their rest on this holiday — fellows who have no 
more stolen my pears than they have robbed the crown jewels 
out of the Tower — and I say I cannot help thinking in my 
own mind, "Are you the rascal who got over m}^ wall last 
night?" Is the suspicion haunting my mind written on my 
countenance? I trust not. What if one man after another 
were to come up to me and saj', " How dare you, sir, suspect 
me in your mind of stealing 3'our fruit? Go be hanged, you 
and your jargonels ! " You rascal thief! it is not merely three- 
halfp'orth of sooty fruit jou rob me of, it is my peace of mind 

— m}^ artless innocence and trust in my fellow -creatures, my 
childlike belief that everything they say is true. How can I 
hold out the hand of friendship in this condition, when my first 
impression is, " My good sir, I strongly suspect that you were 
up my pear-tree last night?" It is a dreadful state of mind. 
The core is black; the death-stricken fruit drops on the 
bough, and a great worm is within — fattening, and feasting, 
and wriggling! Who stole the pears? I say. Is it you, 
brother? Is it 3^ou, madam? Come ! are you ready to answer 

— respondere parati et cantare pares ? (O shame ! shame !) 
Will the villains ever be discovered and punished who stole 

my fruit? Some unlucky rascals who rob orchards are caught 
up the tree at once. Some rob through life with impunity. If 
I, for my part, were to try and get up the smallest tree, on the 
darkest night, in the most remote orchard, I wager any money 
I should he found out — be caught by the leg in a man-trap, or 
have Towler fastening on me." 1 always am found out ; have 
been ; shall be. It's my luck. Other men will carry off bush- 
els of fruit, and get away undetected, unsuspected ; whereas I 
know woe and punishment would fall upon me were I to lay my 



216 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

hand on the smallest pippin. So be it. A man who has this 
precious self-knowledge will surety keep his hands from picking 
and stealing, and his feet upon the paths of virtue. 

I will assume, m}' benevolent friend and present reader, that 
3'ou 3'ourself are virtuous, not from a fear of punishment, but 
from a sheer love of good : but as 3'ou and I walk through life, 
consider what hundreds of thousands of rascals we must have 
met, who have not been found out at all. In high places and 
low, in Clubs and on 'Change, at church or the balls and routs 
of the nobilitj" and gentrj^, how dreadful it is for benevolent 
beings like 3'ou and me to have to think these undiscovered 
though not unsuspected scoundrels are swarming ! What is 
the difference between 3'ou and a galle3^-slave ? Is 3'onder poor 
wretch at the hullis not a man and a brother too? Have 3'ou 
ever forged, my dear sir? Have you ever cheated 3^our neigh- 
bor? Have you ever ridden to Hounslow Heath and robbed 
the mail? Have 3'ou ever entered a first-class railway carriage, 
where an old gentleman sat alone in a sweet sleep, daintily 
murdered him, taken his pocket-book, and got out at the next 
station ? You know that this circumstance occurred in France 
a few months since. If we have travelled in France this 
autumn we ma3^ have met the ingenious gentleman who perpe- 
trated this daring and successful coup. We ma3" have found 
him a well-informed and agreeable man. I have been ac- 
quainted with two or three gentlemen who have been discovered 
after — after the performance of illegal actions. What? That 
agreeable rattling fellow we met was the celebrated Mr. John 
Sheppard? Was that amiable quiet gentleman in spectacles 
the well-known Mr. Fauntlero3^? In Hazlitt's admirable paper, 
•' Going to a Fight," he describes a dashing sporting fellow 
who was in the coach, and who was no less a man than the 
eminent destroyer of Mr. WiUiam Weare. Don't tell me that 
you would not like to have met (out of business) Captain Shep- 
pard, the Reverend Doctor Dodd, or others rendered famous 
by their actions and misfortunes, by their lives and their deaths. 
The3' are the subjects of ballads, the heroes of romance. A' 
friend of mine had the house in May Fair, out of which poor 
Doctor Dodd was taken handcuffed. There w'as the paved hall 
over which he stepped. That little room at the side was, no 
doubt, the stud3^ where he composed his elegant sermons. Two 
3'ears since I had the good fortune to partake of some admir- 
able dinners in Tyburnia — magnificent dinners indeed ; but 
rendered doubly interesting from the fact that the house was 
that occupied b3^ the late Mr. Sadleir. One night the late Mr. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. , 217 

Sadleir took tea in that diniiig-room, and, to the surprise of his 
butler, went out, having put into his pocket his own cream-jug. 
The next morning, you know, he was found dead on Hamp- 
stead Heath, with the cream-jug tying by him, into which he 
had poured the poison by which he died. The idea of the 
ghost of the late gentleman flitting about the room gave a 
strange interest to the banquet. Can you fanc}' him taking his 
tea alone in the dining-room ? He empties that cream-jug and 
puts it in his pocket ; and then he opens yonder door, through 
which he is never to pass again. Now he crosses the hall : 
and hark ! the hall-door shuts upon him, and his steps die 
awa}'. They are gone into the night. They traverse the 
sleeping cit}^ They lead him into the fields, where the gray 
morning is beginning to glimmer. He pours something from a 
bottle into a little silver jug. It touches his lips, the tying lips. 
Do they quiver a prayer ere that awful draught is swallowed? 
When the sun rises they are dumb. 

I neither knew this unhappj' man, nor his countr3^man — 
Laertes let us call him — who is at present in exile, having 
been compelled to fly from remorseless creditors. Laertes fled 
to America, where he earned his bread by his pen. I own to 
having a kindly feeling towards this scapegrace, because, 
though an exile, he did not abuse the country whence he fled. 
I have heard that he went away taking no spoil with him, pen- 
niless almost ; and on his vo3^age he made acquaintance with 
a certain Jew ; and when he fell sick, at New York, this Jew 
befriended him, and gave him help and money out of his own 
store, which was but small. Now, after they had been awhile 
in the strange city, it happened that the poor Jew spent all his 
little mone}^ and he too fell ill, and was in great penurj^ And 
now it was Laertes who befriended that Ebrew Jew. He fee'd 
doctors ; he fed and tended the sick and hungry. Go to, 
Laertes ! I know thee not. It may be thou art justly exul patrice. 
But the Jew shall intercede for thee, thou not, let us trust, hope- 
less Christian sinner. 

Another exile to the same shore I knew: who did not? 
Julius Caesar hardly owed more money than Cucedicus : and, 
gracious powers ! Cucedicus, how did you manage to spend 
and owe so much ? All day he was at work for his chents ; at 
night he was occupied in the Public Council. He neither had 
wife nor children. The rewards which he received for his ora- 
tions were enough to maintain twenty rhetoricians. Night 
after night I have seen him eating his frugal meal, consisting 
but of a fish, a small portion of mutton, and a small measure 



218 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

of Iberian or Trinacrian wine, largel}^ diluted with the sparkling 
waters of Rhenish Gaul. And this was all he had ; and this 
man earned and paid awa}^ talents upon talents ; and fled, 
owing who knows how many more ! Does a man earn fifteen 
thousand pounds a 3'ear, toiling b}' day, talking by night, hav- 
ing horrible unrest in his bed, ghastly terrors at waking, seeing 
an officer lurking at ever}'' corner, a sword of justice for ever 
hanging over his head — and have for his sole diversion a news- 
paper, a lonely mutton-chop, and a little sherry and seltzer- 
water ? In the G erman stories we read how men sell themselves 
to — a certain Personage, and that Personage cheats them. 
He gives them wealth ; 3'es, but the gold-pieces turn into worth- 
less leaves. He sets them before splendid banquets ; 3"es, but 
what an awful grin that black footman has who lifts up the 
dish-cover ; and don't j^ou smell a peculiar sulphurous odor in 
tlie dish ? Faugh ! take it away ; I can't eat. He promises 
them splendors and triumphs. The conqueror's car rolls glit- 
tering through the cit}', the multitude shout and huzza. Dri^^e 
on, coachman. Yes, but who is that hanging on behind the 
carriage? Is this the reward of eloquence, talents, industr}'? 
Is this the end of a life's labor? Don't you remember how, 
when the dragon was infesting the neighborhood of Bab3-lon, 
the citizens used to walk dismall}' out of evenings, and look at 
the vallej^s round about strewed with the bones of the victims 
whom the monster had devoured? O insatiate brute, and most 
disgusting, brazen, and seal}' reptile ! Let us be thankful, 
children, that it has not gobbled us up too. Quick. Let us 
turn away, and pray that we may be kept out of the reach of 
his horrible maw, jaw, claw ! 

When I first came up to London, as innocent as Monsieur 
Gil Bias, I also fell in with some pretty acquaintances, found 
my way into several caverns, and delivered my purse to more 
than one gallant gentleman of the road. One I remember 
especially — one who never eased me personall}' of a single 
maravedi — one than whom I never met a bandit more gallant, 
courteous, and amiable. Rob me? Rolando feasted me; 
treated me to his dinner and his wine ; kept a generous table 
for his friends, and I know was most liberal to many of them. 
How well I remember one of his speculations ! It was a great 
plan for smuggling tobacco. Revenue officers were to be 
bought off ; silent ships were to ply on Ihe Thames; cunning 
depots were to be established, and hnndreds of thousands of 
pounds to be made by the co///>. How his eyes kindled as he 
propounded the scheme to me ! How easy and certain it 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 219 

seemed ! It might have succeeded, I can't sa}- : but the bold 
and merry, the hearty and kindly Rolando came to grief — a 
little matter of imitated signatures occasioned a Bank persecu- 
tion of Rolando the Brave. He walked about armed, and 
vowed he would never be taken alive : but taken he was ; tried, 
condemned, sentenced to perpetual banishment ; and I heard 
that for some time he was universall}' popular in the colony 
which had the honor to possess him. What a song he could 
sing ! 'Twas when the cup was sparkling before us, and heaven 
gave a portion of its blue, boys, blue, that I remember the song 
of Roland at the " Old Piazza Coffee-house." And now where 
is the "Old Piazza Coffee-house ? " Where is Thebes? where 
is Troy? where is the Colossus of Rhodes? Ah, Rolando, 
Rolando ! thou wert a gallant captain, a cheerj', a handsome, 
a merr3\ At me thou never presentedst pistol. Thou badest 
the bumper of Burgundy fill, fill for me, giving those who pre- 
ferred it champagne. GceJum non animum^ &c. Do 30U think 
he has reformed now that he has crossed the sea, and changed 
the air? I have my own opinion. Howbeit, Rolando, thou 
wert a most kind and hospitable bandit. And I love not to 
think of thee with a chain at th}' shin. 

Do you know how all these memories of unfortunate men 
have come upon me? When the}^ came to frighten me this 
morning by speaking of my robbed pears, my perforated garden 
wall, I was reading an article in the Saturday Review about 
Rupilius. I have sat near that young man at a public dinner, 
and beheld him in a gilded uniform. But 3'esterday he lived in 
splendor, had long hair, a flowing beard, a jewel at his neck, 
and a smart surtout. So attired, he stood but vesterdav in 
court ; and to-day he sits over a bowl of prison cocoa, with 
a shaved head, and in a felon's jerkin. 

That beard and head shaved, that gaudy deputy-lieutenant's 
coat excliano'ed for felon uniform, and your dailv bottle of 
champagne for prison cocoa, my poor Riipilhis, whnt a coinlbrt 
it must be to have the business i)i-oiioht to an end ! Champagne 
was the honorable gentleman's driiiU in the House of Commons 
dining-room, as I am informed. What uncommonly dry cham- 
pagne that must have been ! When we saw him outwardly 
happ3', how miserable he must have been ! when we thought 
him prosperous, how dismally poor ! AVhen the great Mr. 
Barker, at the public dinners, called out — " Gentlemen, cliargc 
your glasses, and please silence for the Honorable Member for 
Lambeth!" how that Honorable Member must have writhed 
inwardly ! One day, when there was a talk of a gentleman's 



220 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

honor being questioned, Rupilius said, "If any man doubted 
mine, I would knock him down." But that speech was in the 
way of business. The Spartan boy, who stole the fox, smiled 
while the beast was gnawing him under his cloak : I promise 
you Rupilius had some sharp fangs gnashing under his. We 
have sat at the same feast, I sa}- : we have paid our contribu- 
tion to the same charity. Ah ! when I ask this day for my 
dailj' bread, I pray not to be led into temptation, and to be 
delivered from evil. 



DESSEIN'S. 

I ARRIVED b}' the night-mail packet from Dover. The pas- 
sage had been rough, and the usual consequences had ensued. 
I was disinclined to travel farther that night on my road to 
Paris, and knew the Calais hotel of old as one of the cleanest, 
one of the dearest, one of the most comfortable hotels on the 
continent of Europe. There is no town more French than 
Calais. That charming old "Hotel Dessein," with its court, 
its gardens, its lordly kitchen, its princel}' waiter — a gentle- 
man of the old school, who has welcomed the finest corapan}- in 
Europe — have long been known to me. I have read com- 
plaints in The Times^ more than once, I think, that the Dessein 
bills are dear. A bottle of soda-water certainly costs — well, 
never mind how much. I remember as a boj', at the " Ship " 
at Dover (imperante Carolo Decimo), when, m}^ place to Lon- 
don being paid, I had but 12s. left after a certain little Paris 
excursion (about which vay benighted parents never knew any- 
thing), ordering for dinner a whiting, a beefsteak, and a glass 
of negus, and the bill was, dinner 7s., glass of negus 2s., waiter 
6c?., and onl}' half a crown left, as I was a sinner, for the guard 
and coachman on the way to London ! And I was a sinner. I 
had gone without leave. What a long, dreary, guilt}^ forty 
hours' journe}^ it was from Paris to Calais, I remember ! How 
did I come to think of this escapade, which occurred in the 
Easter vacation of the year 1830 ? I alwa5'S think of it when I 
am crossing to Calais. Guilt, sir, guilt remains stamped on the 
memory, and I feel easier in my mind now that it is liberated 
of this old peccadillo. I met m}^ college tutor only yesterday. 
We were travelling, and stopped at the same hotel. He had 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 221 

the very next room to mine. After he had gone into his apart- 
ment, having shaken me quite kindl}^ by the hand, I felt in- 
cUned to knock at his door and say, " Doctor Bentley, I beg 
your pardon, but do you remember, when I was going down at 
the Easter vacation in 1830, you asked me where I was going 
to spend my vacation? And I said. With my friend Shngsby, 
in Huntingdonshire. Well, sir, I grieve to have to confess 
that I told 3^ou a fib. I had got 201. and was going for a lark 
to Paris, where my friend Edwards was sta3'ing." There, it is 
out. The Doctor will read it, for I did not wake him up after 
all to make my confession, but protest he shall have a copy of 
this Roundabout sent to him when he returns to his lodge. 

They gave me a bedroom there ; a ver}^ neat room on the 
first floor, looking into the pretty garden. The hotel must look 
pretty much as ft did a hundred j-ears ago when he visited it. 
I wonder whether he paid his bill ? Yes : his journey was just 
begun. He had borrowed or got the mone}^ somehow. Such a 
man would spend it liberally enough when he had it, give gen- 
erousl}^ — na}^ drop a tear over the fate of the poor fellow whom 
he relieved. I don't believe a word he says, but I never ac- 
cused him of stinginess about money. That is a fault of much 
more virtuous people than he. Mr. Laurence is ready enough 
with his purse when there are anj^body's guineas in it. Still 
when I went to bed in the room, in his room ; when I think how 
I admire, dislike, and have abused him, a certain dim feeling of 
apprehension filled my mind at the midnight hour. What if I 
should see his lean figure in the black-satin breeches, his sin- 
ister smile, his long thin finger pointing to me in the moonlight 
(for I am in bed, and have popped my candle out), and he 
should say, "You mistrust me, j'ou hate me, do you? And 
you, don't you know how Jack, Tom, and Harry, your brother 
authors, hate you ? " I grin and laugh in the moonlight, in the 
midnight, in the silence. " O you ghost in black-satin breeches 
and a wig! I like to be hated by some men," I say. "I 
know men whose lives are a scheme, whose laughter is a con- 
spiracy, whose smile means something else, whose hatred is a 
cloak, and I had rather these men should hate me than not." 

" My good sir," sa3'S he, with a ghastly grin on his lean face, 
*' you have your wish." 

'^ Apjesf" I say. "Please let me go to sleep. I shan't 
sleep any the worse because — " 

" Because there are insects in the bed, and they sting you?" 
(This is only by way of illustration, my good sir ; the animals 
don't bite me now. All the house at present seems to me ex- 



222 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

cellentl}' clean.) " 'Tis absurd to affect this indifference. If 
you are thin-skinned, and the reptiles bite, they keep 3'^ou from 
sleep." 

' ' There are some men who cr}' out at a flea-bite as loud as 
if they were torn b}- a vulture," I gi*owl. 

" Men of the genus irritahile^ Yny worthy good gentleman ! 
— and 3'ou are one." 

*' Yes, sir, I am of the profession, as you say ; and I dare 
say make a great shouting and cr3'ing at a small hurt." 

' ' You are ashamed of that quality by which 3'ou earn your 
subsistence, and such reputation as 3'ou have? Your sensi- 
bilit3' is 3'our livelihood, m3^ worth3' friend. You feel a pang of 
pleasure or pain ? It is noted in 3^our memor3', and some day 
or other makes its appearance in 3'our manuscript. Wh3', in 
3^our last Roundabout rubbish 3^ou mention reading 3'om' first 
novel on the da3' when King George IV. was crowned. I re- 
member him in his cradle at St. James's, a lovel3' little babe ; a 
gilt Chinese railing was before him, and I dropped the tear of 
sensibiUt3^ as I gazed on the sleeping cherub.'* 

" A tear — a fiddlestick, Mr. Sterne," I growled out, for 
of course I knew m3^ friend in the wig and satin breeches to 
be no other than the notorious, na3', celebrated Mr. Laurence 
Sterne. 

" Does not the sight of a beautiful infant charm and melt 
you, mon ami ? If not, I pity 3 ou. Yes, he was beautiful. I 
was in London the 3^ear he was born. I used to breakfast at 
the ' Mount Coffee-house.' I did not become the fashion until 
two years later, when m3' ' Tristram ' made his appearance, who 
has held his own for a hundred 3^ears. B3' the wa3^ mow bon 
monsieur^ how many authors of your present time will last tiU 
the next centur3' ? Do 3'OU think Brown will ? " 

I laughed with scorn as I lay in my bed (and so did the 
ghost give a ghastl3" snigger) . 

"Brown!" I roared. " One of the most over-rated men 
that ever put pen to paper ! " 

" What do you think of Jones?" 

I grew indignant with this old C3'nic. " As a reasonable 
ghost, come out of the other world, you don't mean," I said, 
" to ask me a serious opinion of Mr. Jones? His books ma3^ be 
very good reading for maid-servants and school-bo3's, but 3'ou 
don't ask me to read them? As a scholar 3'ourself 3^ou must 
know that — " 

" WeU, then, Robinson?" 

** Robinson, I am told, has merit. I dare say ; I never hav« 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 223 

been able to read his books, and can't, therefore, form an}' 
opinion about Mr. Robinson. At least j^ou will allow that I am 
not speaking in a prejudiced manner about him.'' 

"Ah! I see you men of letters have your cabals and 
jealousies, as we had in my time. Tliere was an Irish fellow 
bj' the name of Gouldsmith, who used to abuse me ; but he 
went into no genteel company — and faith ! it mattered little, 
his praise or abuse. I never was more surprised than when I 
heard that Mr. Irving, an American gentleman of parts and 
elegance, had wrote the fellow's life. To make a hero of that 
man, my dear sir, 'twas ridiculous ! You followed in the 
fashion, I hear, and chose to lay a wreath before this queer 
little idol. Preposterous ! A pretty writer, w^ho has turned 
some neat couplets. Bah ! I have no patience with Master 
Posterity, that has chosen to take up this fellow, and make a 
hero of him ! And there was another gentleman of my time, 
Mr. Thiefcatcher Fielding, forsooth ! a fellow with the strength, 
and the tastes, and the manners of a porter ! What madness 
has possessed 3^ou all to bow before that Calvert Butt of a man ? 
— a creature without elegance or sensibilit}' ! The dog had 
spirits, certainly. I remember m}^ Lord Bathurst praising 
them : but as for reading his books — 7na foi^ I would as lief 
go and dive for tripe in a cellar. The man's vulgarit}' stifles 
me. He wafts me whiffs of gin. Tobacco and onions are in 
his great coarse laugh, which choke me, pardi ; and I don't 
think much better of the other fellow — the Scots' gallipot pur- 
vej'or — Peregrine Clinker, Humphrey Random — how did the 
fellow call his rubbish ? Neither of these men had the bel air., 
the hon ton., the/e ne sgais quoy. Pah ! If I meet them in my 
walks by our Stygian river, I give them a wide berth, as that 
hybrid apothecary fellow would say. An ounce of civet, good 
apothecary ; horrible, horrible ! The mere thought of the 
coarseness of those men gives me the chair de poule. Mr. 
Fielding, especially, has no more sensibilit}^ than a butcher in 
Fleet Market. He takes his heroes out of ale-house kitchens, 
or worse places still. And this is the person whom Posterit}' 
has chosen to honor along with me — me! Faith, Monsieur 
Posterity, you have put me in pretty compan}^ and I see 3'ou 
are no wiser than we were in our time. Mr. Fielding, forsooth ! 
Mr. Tripe and Onions ! Mr. Cowheel and Gin ! Thank you 
for nothing, Monsieur Posterity ! " 

"And so," thought I, "even among these Stj'gians this 
env}'^ and quarrelsomeness (if you will permit me the word) 
survive? What a pitiful meanness ! To be sure, I can under- 



224 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

stand this feeling to a certain extent ; a sense of justice will 
prompt it. In my own case, I often feel m3'self forced to 
protest against the absurd praises lavished on contemporaries. 
Yesterda}^, for instance, Lad}' Jones was good enough to praise 
one of my works. Tres Men. But in the very next minute she 
began, with quite as great enthusiasm, to praise Miss Hobson's 
last romance. M3' good creature, what is that woman's praise 
worth who absolutel}' admires the writings of Miss Hobson ? I 
offer a Mend a bottle of '44 claret, fit for a pontifical supper. 
' This is capital wine,' saj^s he ; ' and now we have finished the 
bottle, will you give me a bottle of that ordinaire we drank the 
other da}'?' Very well, m}- good man. You are a good judge 
— of ordinaire, I dare say. Nothing so provokes my anger, 
and rouses my sense of justice, as to hear other men unde- 
servedty praised. In a word, if 3'ou wish to remain friends 
with me, don't praise anybod3^ You tell me that the Venus de' 
Medici is beautiful, or Jacob Omnium is tall. Que diable! 
Can't I judge for myself? Haven't I eyes and a foot-rule? I 
don't think the Venus is so handsome, since 3'ou press me. 
She is pretty, but she has no expression. Ana as for Mr. 
Omnium, I can see much taller men in a fair for twopence." 

"And so," I said, turning round to Mr. Sterne, " 3'ou are 
actuall}- jealous of Mr. Fielding? O you men of letters, you 
men of letters ! Is not the world (3'our world, I mean) big 
enough for all of you ? " 

I often travel in my sleep. I often of a night find myself 
walking in my night-gown about the gra3^ streets. It is awk- 
ward at first, but somehow nobody makes any remark. I glide 
along over the ground with my naked feet. The mud does not 
wet them. The"passers-by do not tread on them. I am wafted 
over the ground, down the stairs, thi'ough the doors. This 
sort of travelling, dear friends, I am sui'e you have all of you 
indulged. 

Well, on the night in question (and, if you wish to know the 
precise date, it was the 31st of September last), after having 
some little conversation with Mr. Sterne in our bedroom, I 
must have got up, though I protest I don't know how, and 
come down stairs with him into the coffee-room of the " Hotel 
Dessein," where the moon was shining, and a cold supper was 
laid out. I forget what we had — " vol-au-vent d'oeufs de 
Phenix — agneau aux pistaches a la Barmecide," — what mat- 
ters what we had ? 

" As regards supper this is certain, the less 3^ou have of it 
the better." 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 225 

That is what one of the guests remarked, — a shabby old 
man, in a wig, and such a dirt}-, ragged, disreputable dressing- 
gown that I should have been quite surprised at him, only one 
never is surprised in dr under certain circumstances. 

" I can't eat 'em now," said the greasy man (with his false 
old teeth, I wonder he could eat anything). "I remember 
Alvanle}^ eating three suppers once at Carlton House — one 
night de petite comite." 

" Petit comite, sir," said Mr. Sterne. 

" Dammy, sir, let me tell my own story my own way. I 
say, one night at Carlton House, playing at blind hooke}^ with 
York, Wales, Tom Raikes, Prince Boothby, and Dutch Sam 
the boxer, Alvanle}^ ate three suppers, and won three and 
twenty hundred pounds in ponies. Never saw a fellow with 
such an appetite, except Wales in his good time. But he de- 
stro3^ed the finest digestion a man ever had with maraschino, 
by tJove — always at it." 

" Try mine," said Mr. Sterne. 

"What a doosid queer box," says Mr. Brummell. 

" I had it from a Capuchin friar in this town. The box is 
but a horn one ; but to the nose of sensibility Araby's perfume 
is not more delicate." 

"I call it doosid stale old rappee," says Mr. Brummell — 
(as for me I declare I could not smell anything at all in either 
of the boxes.) " Old boy in smock-frock, take a pinch? " 

The old boy in the smock-frock, as Mr. Brummell called 
him, was a very old man, with long white beard, wearing, not 
a smock-frock, but a shirt ; and he had actually nothing else 
save a rope round his neck, which hung behind his chair in the 
queerest way. 

"Fair sir," he said, turning to Mr. Brummell, " when the 
Prince of Wales and his father laid siege to our town — " 

"What nonsense are you talking, old cock?" says Mr. 
Brummell ; " Wales was never here. His late Majestj^ George 
IV. passed through on his way to Hanover. M}^ good man, 
you don't seem to know what's up at all. What is he talkin' 
about the siege of Calais ? I lived here fifteen 3^ears ! Ought 
to know. What's his old name ? " 

" I am Master Eustace of Saint Peter's," said the old gen- 
tleman in the shirt. " When my Lord King Edward laid siege 
to this cit}^ — " 

" Laid siege to Jericho ! " cries Mr. Brummell. " The old 
man is cracked — cracked, sir ! " 

u — Laid siege to this city," continued the old man, " I and 

15 



226 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

five more promised Messire Gautier de Maun}' that we would 
give ourselves up as ransom for the place. And we came 
before our Lord King Edward, attired as 3^ou see, and the fair 
queen begged our lives out of her gramerc}^" 

"Queen, nonsense! 3'ou mean the Princess of Wales — 
pretty woman, petit nez retrousse^ grew monstrous stout ! " 
suggested Mr. Brummell, whose reading was evidently not 
extensive. " Sir Sidney Smith was a fine fellow, great talker, 
hook nose, so has Lord Cochrane, so has Lord Wellington. 
She was very sweet on Sir Sidney." 

' ' Your acquaintance with the history of Calais does not seem 
to be considerable," said Mr. Sterne to Mr. Brummell, with a 
shrug. 

' ' Don't it, bishop ? — for I conclude 3'OU are a bishop by 
your wig. I know Calais as well as any man. I lived here for 
3'ears before I took that confounded consulate at Caen. Lived 
in this hotel, then at Leleux's. People used to stop here. 
Good fellows used to ask for poor George Brummell ; Plertford 
did, so did the Duchess of Devonshire. Not know Calais 
indeed ! That is a good joke. Had many a good dinner here : 
sorr}^ I ever left it." 

" My Lord King Edward," chirped the queer old gentleman 
in the shirt, " colonized the place with his English, after we 
had yielded it up to him. I have heard tell they kept it for 
nigh three hundred 3'ears, till m3' Lord de Guise took it from 
a fair Queen, Mar3' of blessed memor3', a hoi}' woman. Eh, 
but Sire Gautier of Maun3' was a good knight, a valiant cap- 
tain, gentle and courteous withal ! Do 3'ou remember his ran- 
soming the ? " 

" What is the old fellow twaddlin' about?" cries Brummell. 
' ' He is talking about some knight ? — I never spoke to a 
knight, and ver3' seldom to a baronet. Firkins, m3' butterman, 
was a knight — a knight and alderman. Wales knighted him 
once on going into the Cit3'." 

" I am not surprised that the gentleman should not under- 
stand Messire Eustace of St. Peter's," said the ghostl3' indi- 
vidual addressed as Mr. Sterne. " Your reading doubtless has 
not been ver3' extensive ? " 

" Damm3', sir, speak for 3'ourself! " cries Mr. Brummell, 
testil3'. "I never professed to be a reading man, but I was 
as good as my neighbors. Wales wasn't a reading man ; York 
wasn't a reading man ; Clarence wasn't a reading man ; Sussex 
was, but he wasn't a man in societ3^ I remember reading 3'our 
' Sentimental Journej',' old bo}^ : read it to the Duchess at 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 227 

Beauvoir, I recollect, and she cried over it. Doosid clever 
an\using book, and does you great credit. Bin*on wrote doosid 
clever books, too ; so did Monk Lewis. George Spencer was 
an elegant poet, and my dear Duchess of Devonshire, if she 
had not been a grande dame, would have beat 'em all, by 
George. Wales couldn't write : he could sing, but he couldn't 
spell." 

" Ah, you know the great world? so did T in my time, Mr. 
Brummell. I have had the visiting tickets of half the nobilit}' 
at my lodgings in Bond Street. But thej' left me there no more 
cared for than last year's calendar," sighed Mr. Sterne. "I 
wonder who is the mode in London now? One of our late 
arrivals, my Lord Macaulay, has prodigious merit and learning, 
and, faith, his histories are more amusing than any novels, my 
own included." 

"Don't know, I'm sure^ not in my line. Pick this bone 
of chicken," says Mr. Brummell, trifling with a skeleton bird 
before him. 

"I remember in this city of Calais worse fare than yon 
bird," said old Mr. Eustace of Saint Peter's. "Marry, sirs, 
when my Lord King Edward laid siege to us, lucky was he who 
could get a slice of horse for his breakfast, and a rat was sold 
at the price of a hare." 

" Hare is coarse food, never tasted rat," remarked the Beau. 
" Table-d'hote poor fare enough for a man like me, who has 
been accustomed to the best of cookery. But rat — stifle me ! 
I couldn't swallow that : never could bear hardship at all." 

" We had to bear enough when my Lord of England pressed 
us. 'Twas pitiful to see the faces of our women as the siege 
went on, and hear the little ones asking for dinner." 

' ' Always a bore, children. At dessert, they are bad enough, 
but at dinner they're the deuce and all," remarked Mr. Brum- 
mell. 

Messire Eustace of St. Peter's did not seem to pay much 
attention to the Beau's remarks, but continued his own train of 
thought as~old men will do. 

"I hear," said he, "that there has actually been no war 
between us of France and you men of England for wellnigh fifty 
year. Ours has ever been a nation of warriors. And besides 
her regular found men-at-arms, 'tis said the English of the pres- 
ent time have more than a hundred thousand of archers with 
weapons that will carry for half a mile. And a multitude have 
come amongst us of late from a great Western country, never so 
much as heard of in my time — valiant men and great drawers 



228 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

of the long bow, and they say they have ships in armor that no 
shot can penetrate. Is it so? Wonderful; wonderful! The 
best armor, gossips, is a stout heart." 

" And if ever manl}' heart beat under shirt-frill, thine is that 
heart. Sir Eustace ! " cried Mr. Sterne, enthusiastically. 

" We, of France, were never accused of lack of courage, sir, 
in so far as I know," said Messire Eustace. " We have shown 
as much in a thousand wars with j^ou English by sea and land ; 
and sometimes we conquered, and sometimes, as is the fortune 
of war, we were discomfited. And notably in a great sea-fight 
which befell off" Ushant on the first of June — Our Amiral, 
Messire Villaret de Joyeuse, on board his galleon named the 
' Vengeur,' being sore pressed by an English bombard, rather 
than yield the crew of his ship to mercy, determined to go 
down with all on board of her: and to the cry of Vive la Re- 
pub— or, I would say, of Notre Dame a la Rescousse, he and 
his crew all sank to an immortal grave — " 

" Sir," said I, looking with amazement at the old gentleman, 
" surel}^ surel}^, there is some mistake in your statement. 
Permit me to observe that the action of the first of June took 
place five hundred 3^ears after j^our time, and — " 

"Perhaps I am confusing my dates," said the old gentle- 
man, with a faint blush. " You sa}' I am mixing up the trans- 
actions of my time on earth with the storj^ of my successors? 
It may be so. We take no count of a few centuries more or 
less in our dwelUng by the darkUng Stygian river. Of late, 
there came amongst us a good knight, Messire de Cambronne, 
who fought against you English in the countr}^ of Flanders, 
being captain of the guard of my Lord the King of France, in 
a famous battle where 3^ou English would have been utterly 
routed but for the succor of the Prussian heathen. This Mes- 
sire de Cambronne, when bidden to yield b}^ you of England, 
answered this, ' The guard dies but never surrenders ; ' and 
fought a long time afterwards, as became a good knight. In 
our wars with 3'ou of England it may have pleased the Fates to 
give you the greater success, but on our side, also, there has 
been no lack of brave deeds performed by brave men." 

" King Edward may have been the victor, sir, as being the 
strongest, but you are the hero of the siege of Calais ! " cried 
Mr. Sterne. "Your story is sacred, and 3^our name has been 
blessed for five hundred years. Wherever men speak of patriot- 
ism and sacrifice, Eustace of Saint Pierre shall be beloved and 
remembered. I prostrate myself before the bare feet which 
stood before King Edward; What collar of chivalry is to be 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 229 

compared to that glorious order which you wear? Think, sir, 
how out of the m^^riad milUoiis of our race, you, and some few 
more, stand forth as exemplars of duty and honor. Fortunati 
nimium ! " 

"Sir," said the old gentleman, "I did but my duty at a 
painful moment ; and 'tis matter of wonder to me that men talk 
still, and glorify such a trifling matter. By our Lad^^'s grace, 
in the fair kingdom of France, there are scores of thousands of 
men, gentle and simple, who would do as I did. Does not 
every sentinel at his post, does not every archer in the front of 
battle, brave it, and die where his captain bids him? Who am 
I that I should be chosen out of ail France to be an example of 
fortitude? I braved no tortures, though these I trust I would 
have endured with a good heart. I was subject to threats only. 
Who was the Roman knight of whom the Latin clerk Horatius 
teUs?" 

" A Latin clerk ? Faith, I forget my Latin," says Mr. Brum- 
mell. " Ask the parson, here." 

" Messire Regulus, I remember, was his name. Taken 
prisoner by the Saracens, he gave his knightly word, and was 
permitted to go seek a ransom among his own people. Being 
unable to raise the sum that was a fitting ransom for such a 
knight, he returned to Afric, and cheerfully submitted to the 
tortures which the Paynims inflicted. And 'tis said he took 
leave of his friends as gayly as though he were going to a vil- 
lage kermes, or riding to his garden house in the suburb of the 
city." 

" Great, good, glorious man ! " cried Mr. Sterne, very much 
moved. "Let me embrace that gallant hand, and bedew it 
with my tears ! As long as honor lasts thy name shall be re- 
membered. See this dew-drop twinkUng on my cheek ! 'Tis 
the sparkling tribute that Sensibility pays to Valor. Though 
in my life and practice I may turn from Virtue, believe me, I 
never have ceased to honor her ! Ah, Virtue ! Ah, Sensibility ! 
Oh — " 

Here Mr. Sterne was interrupted by a monk of the Order 
of St. Francis, who stepped into the room, and begged us all 
to take a pinch of his famous old rappee. I suppose the snuff 
was very pungent, for, with a great start, I woke up ; and now 
perceived that I must have been dreaming altogether. ' ' Des- 
sein's " of now-a-days is not the " Dessein's " which Mr. Sterne, 
and Mr. Brummell, and I recollect in the good old times. The 
town of Calais has bought the old hotel, and "Dessein" has 
gone over to " Quillacq's." And I was there yesterday. And 



230 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

I remember old diligences, and old postilions in pigtails and 
jack- boots, who wero once as alive as 1 am, and whose cracking 
whips 1 have heard in tlie midnight man}' and many a time. 
Now, wliere are tiiey? Behold they have been ferried over 
Styx, and have passed away into limbo. 

J wonder what time does my boat go? Ah ! Here comes the 
waiter bringing me my little bill. 



ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCI. 

We have lately made the acqnaintancc of an old lady of 
ninety, who has p:issed the last twenty -five 3*ears of her old life 
in ^a great metropolitan establishment, the workhonse, namely, 
of the parish of Saint Lazarus. Sta}' — twent3'-three or four 
years aao, she came out once, and thought to earn a little 
money by hop-picking ; but being overworked, and having to 
lie out at night, she got a palsy which has incapacitated her 
from all further labor, and has caused her poor old limbs to 
shake ever since. 

An illustratio'.i of that dismal ])roverb which tells us how 
poverty mikes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this 
poor old shaking body has lo lay herself down every night in 
lier workhouse bed by the side of some other old woman with 
whom sh3 may or ma\' not agree. She herself can't be a very 
pleasant bid-fellow, poor thing I with her shaking old limbs and 
cold feet. She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not 
thinking of happy old times, for hers never were happy; but 
sleepless with aches, and agues, and rheum itism of old age. 
'•The gentleman gave me brandy-and-water," she said, her old 
voicj shaking with rapture at the thought. 1 never had a great 
love for Queen Charlotte, but I like her better now from what 
this old lady told me. The Qieen, who loved snuff herself, 
has left a legac}' of snuff to certain poorhonses ; and, in her 
watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen Char- 
lotte's snuff, '" and it do comfort me, sii-, t'lat it do ! " Puive- 
vis exigai mnnus. Here is a forlorn aged creature, shaking with 
palsy, with no soul among the great struggling multitude of 
mankind to (tare for her. not quite trampled out of life, but 
past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and soothed 
in her hours of unrest by this penn}^ legacy. Let me think as 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 231 

I write. (The next month's sermon, thank goodness ! is safe 
to press.) This discourse will appear at the season when I 
have read that wassail-bowls make their appearance ; at the 
season of pantomime, turkey and sausages, plum-puddings, 
jolhfications for schoolbo3^s ; Christmas bills, and reminiscences 
more or less sad and sweet for elders. If we oldsters are not 
merry, we shall be having a semblance of merriment. We 
shall see the young folks laughing round the holly-bush. We 
shall pass the bottle round cosily as we sit by the fire. That 
old thing will have a sort of festival too. Beef, beer, and 
pudding will be served to her for that daj' also. Christmas 
falls on a Thursday. Friday is the workhouse da}' for coming 
out. Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has her in- 
vitation for Friday, 26th December ! Ninet}- is she, jjoor old 
soul? Ah! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe I 
*' Yes, ninet}'-, sir," she says, "' and m}- mother was a hundred, 
and my grandmother was a hundred and two." 

Herself ninet}-, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a 
hundred and two? What a queer calculation ! 

Ninety ! "Very good, granny : you were born, than, in 1772. 

Your mother, we will sa3% was twenty-seven whan you were 
born, and was born therefore in 1745. 

Your grandmother was thirty when her daughter was born, 
and was born therefore in 1715. 

We will begin with the present granny first. My good old 
creature, j^ou can't of course remimbar, bat that little gentle- 
man for whom your mother was laundress in tiie Temple was 
the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith, author of a " History of Eng- 
land," the " Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. 
You were brought almost an infant to his chambei-s in Brick 
Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was 
alwa3'S good to children. That gentleman who wellnigh smoth- 
ered 3^ou b}' sitting down on 3'ou as 3'ou lay in a chair asleep 
was the learned Mr. S. Johnson, whose history of '' Rasselas " 
3^ou have never read, m3^ poor soul ; and whose tiaged v of 
"Irene" I don't believe an3^ man in these kingdoms ever 
perused. That tips3^ Scotch gentleman who used to come to 
the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody langlied, 
wrote a more amusing book than an3' of the scholai's. 3onr 
Mr. Burke and your Mr. Johnson, and 3-our Doctor Goldsmith. 
Your father often took him home in a chair to his lodgings : and 
has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous 
wit. Of course, m3^ good creature, vou remember the Gordon 
Riots, and cr3'ing No Popery before Mr. Langdale's house, 



232 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

the Popish distiller's, and that bonn}' fire of my Lord Mans- 
field's books in Bloomsbury Square? Bless us, what a heap of 
illuminations 3^ou have seen ! For the glorious victory over the 
Americans at Breed's Hill ; for the peace in 1814, and the 
beautiful Chinese bridge in St. James's Park ; for the corona- 
tion of his Majesty, whom 3^ou recollect as Prince of Wales, 
Good}', don't you ? Yes ; and 3^ou went in a procession of 
laundresses to pa}' 3'our respects to his good lad}', the injured 
Queen of England, at Brandenburg House ; and 3'ou remember 
3' our mother told 3'ou how she was taken to see the Scotch 
lords executed at the Tower. And as for your gi^andmother, 
she was born five 3'ears after the battle of Malplaquet, she was ; 
where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for 
the Queen. With the help of a " Wade's Chronolog}"," I can 
make out ever so queer a histor3^ for 3'ou, m3^ poor old bod3', 
and a pedigree as authentic as man3^ in the peerage-books. 

Peerage-books and pedigrees ? What does she know about 
them? Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, 
literar3' gentlemen, and the like, what have the3' ever been to 
her? Grann3^, did 3'ou ever hear of General Wolfe? Your 
mother may have seen him embark, and 3'our father ma3' have 
carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may have cried 
huzza for Marlborough ; but what is the Prince Duke to you, 
and did 3'ou ever so much as hear tell of his name? How many 
hundred or thousand of 3^ears had that toad lived who was in 
the coal at the defunct Exhibition ? — and 3'et he was not a 
bit better informed than toads seven or eight hundred 3'ears 
3'ounger. 

"Don't talk to me 3'our nonsense about Exhibitions, and 
Prince Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is 
it? " sa3's grann3'. " I know there was a good Queen Charlotte, 
for she left me snuff" ; and it comforts me of a night when I lie 
awake." 

To me there is something very touching in the notion of 
that little pinch of comfort doled out to grann3', and gratefully 
inhaled b3' her in the darkness. Don't 3'ou remember what tra- 
ditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of diamonds, 
laces of inestimable value, sent out of the countr3' privatel3' by 
the old Queen, to enrich certain relations in M-ckl-nb-rg Str-l-tz ? 
Not all the treasure went. Non omnis moritur. A poor old 
palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts 
her shaking old hand to her nose. Gliding; noiselesslv amono: 
the beds where lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless 
dormitor}^, I fanc3' an old ghost with a snufl*-box that does not 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 233 

creak. "There, Goody, take of m}- rappee. You will not 
sneeze, and I shall not sa}^ ' God bless 3'ou.' But you will 
think kindl}' of old Queen Charlotte, won't 3'ou? Ah ! I had a 
man}^ troubles, a many troubles. I was a prisoner almost so 
much as you are. I had to eat boiled mutton ever}^ day : entre 
nous, I abominated it. But I never complained. I swallowed 
it. I made the best of a hard life. We have all our burdens 
to bear. But hark ! I hear the cock-crow, and snuff the morn- 
ing air." And with this the ro3'al ghost vanishes up the chim- 
ney — if there be a chimne}^ in that dismal harem, where poor 
old Twoshoes and her companions pass their nights — their 
dreary nights, their restless nights, their cold long nights, 
shared in what glum companionship, illumined by what a feeble 
taper ! 

"Did I understand 3'OU, my good Twoshoes, to say that 
3'our mother was seven-and-twent3^ years old when you were 
born, and that she married your esteemed father when she her- 
self was twenty-five? 1745, then, was the date of your dear 
mother's birth. I dare say her father was absent in the Low 
Countries, with his Ro3'al Highness the Duke of Cumberland, 
under whom he had the honor of carrying a halberd at the 
famous engagement of Fontenoy — or if not there, he may have 
been at Preston Pans, under General Sir John Cope, when the 
wild Highlanders broke through all the laws of discipline and 
the English lines ; and, being on the spot, did he see the famous 
ghost which didn't appear to Colonel Gardiner of the Dragoons ? 
My good creature, is it possible 3^ou don't remember that Doc- 
tor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Orford, as you justl3^ 
say), old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr. Pope, of Twitnam, 
died in the year of your birth? What a wretched memory you 
have ! What? haven't the3' a library, and the commonest books 
of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus, where you 
dwell?" 

"Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince AVilliam, Dr. Swift, 
Atossa, and Mr. Pope, of Twitnam ! What is the gentleman 
talking about?" says old Goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a 
laugh like an old parrot — 3^ou know they live to be as old as 
Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is compar- 
atively 3'oung (ho! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to 
an immense old age. Some which Frederick the Great fed at 
Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue mould ok 
their old backs ; and they could tell all sorts of queer stories, 
if they chose to speak — but they are very silent, carps are — 
of their nature peu communicatives. Oh ! what has been thy 



234 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

long life, old Goody, but a dole of bread and water and a perch 
on a cage ; a drearj^ swim round and round a Lethe of a pond ? 
What are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldj' ones, and do they 
know it is a gi*andchild of England who brings bread to feed 
them ? 

No ! Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand 
3^ears old and have nothing to tell but that one day is like 
another ; and the histor3' of friend Good}' Twoshoes has not 
much more variet}' than theirs. Hard labor, hard fare, hard 
bed, numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger most da^'s. 
That is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, ''Thank 
heaven, I am not as one of these?" If I were eighty, would I 
like to feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have to 
get up and make a bow when Mr. Bumble the beadle entered 
the common room? to have to listen to Miss Prim, who came 
to give me her ideas of the next world ? If I were eighty, I own 
I should not like to have to sleep with auv^ther gentleman of my 
own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and 
snoring ; to march down m3'vale of years at word of command, 
accommodating m}' tottering old steps to those of the other 
prisoners in m}' ding}*, hopeless old gang ; to hold out a trem- 
bling hand for a sicky pittance of gruel, and sa}-, " Thank 3'ou, 
ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her sermon. 
John ! when Good}' Twoshoes comes next Friday, I desire she 
may not be disturbed by theological controversies. You have 
a very fair voice, and I heard you and the maids singing a 
hymn very sweetly the other night, and was thankful that our 
humble household should be in such harmony. Poor old Two- 
shoes is so old and toothless and quak}-, that she can't sing a bit ; 
but don't be giving yourself airs over her, because she can't sing 
and you can. Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth. 
Set that old kettle to sing by our hob. Warm her old stomach 
with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the 
poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out 
for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more 
Christmases for thee ? Think of the ninety she has seen already ; 
the four-score and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years ! 

If you were in her place, would you like to have a remem- 
brance of better early days, when you were young, and happy, 
and loving, perhaps ; or would you prefer to have no past on 
which your mind could rest? About the year 1788, Goody, 
were your cheeks rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some 
3'oung fellow in powder and a pigtail look in them ? We may 
grow old, but to us some stories never are old. On a sudden 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 235 

they rise up, not dead, but living — not forgotten, but freshly 
remembered. The eyes gleam on us as they used to do. The 
dear voice thrills in our hearts. The rapture of the meeting, 
the terrible, terrible parting, again and again the tragedy is 
acted over. Yesterda}^, in the street, I saw a pair of eyes so 
like two which used to brighten at m}^ coming once, that the 
whole past came back as I walked lonel}^, in the rush of the 
Strand, and I was 3'oung again in the midst of jo3'S and sor- 
rows, alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly remembered. 
If I tell a tale out of school, will an}- harm come to my old 
school-girl? Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was 
a source of great pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes. She 
sewed it away in her old stays somewhere, thinking here at 
least was a safe investment — ( vestis — a vest — an investment, 
— pardon me, thou poor old thing, but I cannot help the pleas- 
antrj'). And what do 3'ou think:' Another pensionuaire of the 
establishment cut the coin out of Goody's stays — an old woman 
who wettt upon two crutches/ Faugh, the old witch! What! 
Violence amongst these toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble 
ones? Robbery amongst the penniless? Dogs coming and 
snatching Lazarus's crumbs out of his lap? Ah, how indignant 
Goody was as she told the story I To that pond at Potsdam 
where the carps live for hundreds of hundreds of years, with 
hunches of blue mould on their back, I dare say the little Prince 
and Princess of Preussen-Britannien come sometimes with 
crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones. Those eyes may 
have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon's jack-boots : 
they have seen Frederick's lean shanks reflected in their pool ; 
and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them — and now, for 
a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob, squabble, 
gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the ignoble strug- 
gle is over. Sans souci, indeed ! It is mighty well writing 
'' Sans souci" over the gate; but where is the gate through 
which Care has not slipped ? She perches on the shoulders or' 
the sentry in the sentry-box : she whispers the porter sleeping 
in his arm-chair : she glides up the staircase, and lies down 
between the king and queen in their bed-royal : this ver}^ night 
I dare say she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes's meagre 
bolster, and whisper, " Will the gentleman and those ladies ask 
me again ? No, no ; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." 
Goody ! For shame of yourself ! Do not be cynical. Do not 
mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas 
morning dawned upon thee ninet}^ times? For four-score and 
ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry 



236 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

and obscure? Peace and good- will to thee, let us sa}^ at this 
Christmas season. Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, 
thou poor old pilgrim ! And of the bread which God's bounty 
gives us, I pray, brother reader, we may not forget to set aside 
a part for those noble and silent poor, from whose innocent 
hands war has torn the means of labor. Enough ! As I hope 
for beef at Christmas, I vow a note shall be sent to Saint Laza- 
rus Union House, in which Mr. Roundabout requests the honor 
of Mrs. Twoshoes's company on Friday, 26th December. 



AUTOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. 

Never have I seen a more noble tragic face. In the centre 
of the forehead there was a great furrow of care, towards which 
the brows rose piteousl}^ What a deep solemn grief in the 
eyes ! They looked blankly at the object before them, but 
through it, as it were, and into the grief beyond. In moments 
of pain, have you not looked at some indifferent object so? It 
mingles dumb!}' with j^our grief, and remains afterwards con- 
nected with it in your mind. It ma}^ be some indifferent thing 
— a book which 3'ou were reading at the time when you re- 
ceived her farewell letter (how well you remember the paragraph 
afterwards — the shape of the words, and their position on the 
page) ; the words you were writing when your mother came in, 
and said it was all over — she was married — Emily married — 
to that insignificant httle rival at whom you have laughed a 
hundred times in her company. Well, well ; my friend and 
reader, whoe'er }'0u be — old man or young, wife or maiden — 
you have had your grief-pang. B03', j^ou have lain awake the 
first night at school, and thought of home. Worse still, man, 
you have parted from the dear ones with bursting heart : and, 
lonely boj^, recall the bolstering an unfeeling comrade gave j'ou ; 
and, lonely man, just torn from 3'our children — their little 
tokens of affection yet in your pocket — pacing the deck at even- 
ing in the midst of the roaring ocean, 3'ou can remember how 
you were told that supper was read}^ and how j^ou went down 
to the cabin and had brandy-and-water and biscuit. You re- 
member the taste of them. Yes ; for ever. You took them 
whilst you and your Grief were sitting together, and 3'our Grief 
clutched 3'ou round the soul. Serpent, how you have writhed 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 237 

round me, and bitten me. Remorse, Remembrance, &c., come 
in the night season, and I feel 3'ou gnawing, gnawing ! . . . 
I tell 3"Ou that man's face was like Laocoon's (which, b}- the 
way, I alwa3^s think over-rated. The real head is at Brussels, 
at the Duke Daremberg's, not at Rome). 

That man ! What man ? That man of whom I said that 
his magnificent countenance exhibited the noblest tragic woe. 
He was not of European blood. He was handsome, but not of 
European beautj^ His face white — not of a Northern white- 
ness ; his e3^es protruding somewhat, and rolling in their grief. 
Those eyes had seen the Orient sun, and his beak was the 
eagle's. His lips were full. The beard, curling round them, 
was unkempt and tawny. The locks were of a deep, deep cop- 
pery red. The hands, swart and powerful, accustomed to the 
rough grasp of the wares in which he dealt, seemed unused to 
the flimsy artifices of the bath. He came from the Wilderness, 
and its sands were on his robe, his cheek, his tattered sandal, 
and the hardy foot it covered. 

And his grief — whence came his sorrow? I will tell 3'ou. 
He bore it in his hand. He had evidently just concluded the 
compact by which it became his. His business was that of a 
purchaser of domestic raiment. At earl3' dawn — na3', at what 
hour when the cit3^ is alive — do we not all hear the nasal cr3^ of 
" Clo?" In Paris, Habits Galons^ Marchand cf habits^ is the 
twanging signal with which the wandering merchant makes his 
presence known. It was in Paris I saw this man. Where else 
have I not seen him ? In the Roman Ghetto — at the Gate of 
David, in his fathers' once imperial cit3\ The man I mean was 
an itinerant vender and purchaser of wardrobes — what 3"oa 
call an . . . Enough ! You know his name. 

On his left shoulder hung his bag ; and he held in that hand 
a white hat, which I am sure he had just purchased, and which 
was the cause of the grief which smote his noble features. Of 
course I cannot particularize the sum, but he had given too 
much for that hat. He felt he might have got the thing for 
less mone3\ It was not the amount, I am sure ; it was the 
principle involved. He had given fourpence (let us say) for that 
which threepence would have purchased. He had been done : 
and a manl3' shame was upon him, that he, whose energy, acute- 
ness, experience, point of honor, should have made him the vic- 
tor in any mercantile duel in which he should engage, had been 
overcome by a porter's wife, who very likel3' sold him the old hat, 
or by a student who was tired of it. I can understand his grief. 
Do I seem to be speaking of it in a disrespectful or flippant way ? 



238 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Then you mistake me. He had been outwitted. He had desired, 
coaxed, schemed, haggled, got what lie wanted, and now found he 
had paid too much for his bargain. You don't suppose I would 
ask YOU to laugh at that man's grief? It is 3'ou, clumsy C3'nic, 
who are disposed to sneer, whilst it may be tears of genuine 
S3'mpathy are trickling down this nose of mine. What do 3'ou 
mean b3^ laughing ? If 3'ou saw a wounded soldier on the field 
of battle, would 3'Ou laugh? If 3'ou saw a ewe robbed of her 
lamb, would 3-ou laugh, you brute? It is 3'ou who are the 
C3'nic, and have no feeling : and you sneer because that grief 
is unintelhgible to 3'ou which touches m3' finer sensibiht3\ 
The Old-Clothes'-Man had been defeated in one of the 
dail3^ battles of his most interesting, chequered, adventurous 
life. 

Have 3'Ou ever figured to 3'ourself what such a life must be? 
The pursuit and conquest of twopence must be the most eager 
and fascinating of occupations. We might all engage in that 
business if we would. Do not whist-players, for example, toil, 
and think, and lose their temper over sixpenn3' points ? The3' 
bring study, natural genius, long forethought, memory, and 
careful historical experience to bear upon their favorite labor. 
Don't tell me that it is the sixpenny points, and five shillings 
the rub, which keeps them for hours over their painted jDaste- 
board. It is the desire to conquer. Hours pass b3'. Night 
glooms. Dawn, it may be, rises unheeded ; and they sit call- 
ing for fresh cards at the " Portland," or the " Union," while 
waning candles splutter in the sockets, and languid waiters 
snooze in the ante-room. Sol rises. Jones has lost four 
pounds : Brown has won two ; Robinson lurks away to his 
famil3^ house and (mayhap indignant) Mrs. R. Hours of even- 
ing, night, morning, have passed away whilst they have been 
waging this sixpenny- battle. What is the loss of four pounds 
to Jones, the gain of two to Brown? B. is, perhaps, so rich 
that two pounds more or less are as naught to him ; J. is so 
hopelessl3^ involved that to win four pounds cannot benefit his 
creditors, or alter his condition ; but they play for that stake : 
the3' put forward their best energies : the3' ruff, finesse (what 
are the technical words, and how do I know?) It is but a six- 
penny- game if you like ; but they want to win it. So as re- 
gards m3' friend 3'onder with the hat. He stakes his mone3' : 
he wishes to win the game, not the hat merely. I am not 
prepared to sa3' that he is not inspired by a noble ambition. 
Caesar wished to be first in a vi]la2:e. If first of a hundred 
yokels, wh3^ not first of two? And m3' friend the old-clothes - 



ROUNDABOUT PAPEKS. 239 

man wishes to win his game, as well as to turn his little six- 
pence. 

Suppose in the game of life — and it is but a twopenny game 
after all — you are equally eager of winning. Shall you be 
ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it? There are games, 
too, which are becoming to particular periods of life. I remem- 
ber in the days of our youth, when my friend Arthur Bowler 
was an eminent cricketer. Slim, swift, strong, well-built he 
presented a goodly appearance on the ground in his flannel 
uniform. Militdsti non sine gloria^ Bowler my bo}* ! Hush! 
We tell no tales. Mum is the word. Yonder comes Charley 
his son. Now Charley his son has taken the field and is famous 
among the eleven of his school. Bowler senior, with his ca- 
pacious waistcoat, &c. , waddling after a ball, would present an 
absurd object, whereas it does the ej^es good to see Bowler 
junior scouring the plain — a young exemplar of joyful health, 
vigor, activity. The old boy wisely contents himself with 
amusements more becoming his age and waist ; takes his sober 
ride ; visits his farm soberly — busies himself aboul his pigs, 
his ploughing, his peaches, or what not ! Very small routinier 
amusements interest him; and (thank goodness!) nature pro- 
vides very kindly for kindly-disposed fogies. We relish those 
things which we scorned in our lusty youth, I see the young 
folks of an evening kindhng and glowing over their delicious 
novels. I look up and watch the eager ej^e flashing down the 
page, being, for m}^ part, perfectly contented with m^- twaddhng 
old volume of " Howel's Letters," or the Gentleman s Magazine. 
I am actually arrived at such a calm frame of mind that I like 
batter-pudding. I never should have believed it possible ; but 
it is so. Yet a little while, and I may relish water-gruel. It 
will be the age of mon lait de poide et mon honnet de nuit. And 
then — the cotton extinguisher is pulled over the old noddle, 
and the little flame of life is popped out. 

Don't 3^ou know elderly people who make learned notes in 
Army Lists, Peerages, and the like ? This is the batter-pudding, 
water-gruel of old age. The worn-out old digestion does not 
care for stronger food. Formerly it could swallow twelve-hours' 
tough reading, and digest an encyclopaedia. 

If I had children to educate, I would, at ten or twelve years 
of age, have a professor, or professoress, of whist for them, and 
cause them to be well grounded in that great and useful game. 
You cannot learn it well when you are old, any more than you 
can learn dancing or bilhards. In our house at home we 
youngsters did not play whist because we were dear obedient 



240 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

children, and the elders said plajing at cards was " a waste of 
time." A waste of time, mj' good people ! Allans! What do 
elderly home-keeping people do of a night after dinner ? Darby 
gets his newspaper ; m3^ dear Joan her Missionary Magazine or 
her volume of Cumming's Sermons — and don't you know what 
ensues ? Over the arm of Darb^^'s arm-chair the paper flutters 
to the ground unheeded, and he performs the trumpet obligato 
que vous savez on his old pose. My dear old Joan's head nods 
over her sermon (awakening though the doctrine may be). 
Ding, ding, ding : can that be ten o'clock ? It is time to send 
the servants to bed, m}' dear — and to bed master and mistress 
go too. But they have not wasted their time playing at cards. 
Oh, no ! I belong to a Club where there is whist of a night; 
and not a little amusing is it to hear Brown speak of Thomp- 
son's play, and vice versa. But there is one man — Greatorex 
let us call him — who is the acknowledged captain and primus 
of all the whist-players. "We all secretly admire him. I, for 
my part, watch him in private life, hearken to what he says, 
note what he orders for dinner, and have that feeling of awe for 
him that I used to have as a boy for the cock of the school. 
Not play at whist? " Quelle triste vieillesse vous vous preparez I " 
were the words of the great and good Bishop of Autun. I can't. 
It is too late now. Too late ! too late ! Ah ! humiliating con- 
fession ! That jo}' might have been clutched, but the life-stream 
has swept us by it — the swift life-stream rushing to the nearing 
sea. Too late ! too late ! Twent3'stone my bo}^ ! when 3'ou 
read in the papers " Valse a deux temps," and all the fashion- 
able dances taught to adults b}^ "Miss Lightfoots," don't 3'OU 
feel that 3'OU would like to go in and learn ? Ah, it is too late ! 
You have passed the choreas^ Master Twent3'stone, and the 
young people are dancing without 3'ou. 

I don't believe much of what m3" Lord B3^ron the poet sa3's -, 
but when he wrote, "So for a good old gentlemanl3" vice, I 
think I shall put up with avarice," I think his lordship meant 
what he wrote, and if he practised what he preached, shall not 
quarrel with him. As an occupation in declining 3-ears, I de- 
clare I think saving is useful, amusing, and not unbecoming. 
It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be 
pla3'ed b3^ da3', b3" night, at home and abroad, and at which 3-ou 
must win in the long run. I am tired and want a cab. The 
fare to m3^ house, sa3^, is two shillings. The cabman will 
naturally want half a crown. I pull out m3' book. I show him 
the distance is exactl3' three miles and fifteen hundred and 
ninet3^ yards. I oflfer him my card — m3' winning card. As 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 241 

he retires with the two shillings, blaspheming inwardly, every 
curse is a compliment to my skill. I have played him and beat 
him ; and a sixpence is m^' spoil and just reward. This is a 
game, by the way, which women play far more cleverly than we 
do. But what an interest it imparts to life ! During the whole 
drive home I know I shall have mj^ game at the journey's end ; 
am sure of my hand, and shall beat my adversary. Or I can 
pla3" in another way. I won't have a cab at all, I will wait for 
the omnibus : I will be one of the damp fourteen in that steam- 
ing vehicle. I will wait about in the rain for an hour, and 'bus 
after 'bus shall pass, but I will not be beat. I ivill have a 
place, and get it at length, with my boots wet through, and an 
umbrella dripping between m}^ legs. I have a rheumatism, a 
cold, a sore throat, a sulky evening, — a doctor's bill to-morrow 
perhaps? Yes, but I have won my game, and am gainer of a 
shilling on this rubber. 

If you play this game all through life it is wonderful what 
daily interest it has, and amusing occupation. For instance, 
m}^ wife goes to sleep after dinner over her volume of sermons. 
As soon as the dear soul is sound asleep, I advance softl}^ and 
puff out her candle. Her pure dreams will be all the happier 
without that light ; and, say she sleeps an hour, there is a penny 
gained. 

As for clothes, parbleu I there is not much money to be saved 
in clothes, for the fact is, as a man advances in life — as he 
becomes an Ancient Briton (mark the pleasantr}") — he goes 
without clothes. When my tailor proposes something in the 
way of a change of raiment, I laugh in his face. My blue coat 
and brass buttons will last these ten years. It is seed}^? What 
then ? I don't want to charm anybod}^ in particular. You sa}^ 
that m}' clothes are shabby ? What do I care ? When I wished 
to look well in somebody's eyes, the matter may have been 
different. But now, when I receive my bill of 10/. (let us say) 
at the year's end, and contrast it with old tailors' reckonings, I 
feel that I have played the game with master tailor, and beat 
him ; and my old clothes are a token of the victory. 

I do not like to give servants board-wages, though they are 
cheaper than household bills : but I know they save out of 
board-wages, and so beat me. This shows that it is not the 
money but the game which interests me. So about wine. I 
have it good and dear. I will trouble you to tell me where to 
get it good and cheap. You may as well give me the address 
of a shop where I can buy meat for fourpence a pound, or sov- 
ereigns for fifteen shilhngs apiece. At the game of auctions, 

16 



242 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

docks, shy wine-merchants, depend on it there is no winning ; 
and I would as soon think of bujing jewellery at an auction in 
Fleet Street as of purchasing wine from one of your dreadful 
needy wine-agents such as infest every man's door. Grudge 
myself good wine ? As soon grudge my horse corn. Merci ! 
that would be a very losing game indeed, and 3'our humble ser- 
vant has no relish for such. 

But in the very pursuit of saving there must be a hundred 
harmless delights and pleasures which we who are careless 
necessarily forego. What do you know about the natural 
history of 3'our household? Upon your honor and conscience, 
do 3'ou know the price of a pound of butter? Can 3'ou say 
what sugar costs, and how much 3'our famil3' consumes and 
ought to consume ? How much lard do 3'ou use in 3'our house ? 
As I think on these subjects I own I hang down the head of 
shame. I suppose for a moment that 3'ou, who are reading 
this, are a middle-aged gentleman, and paterfamilias. Can 
3'OU answer the above questions ? You know, sir, you cannot. 
Now turn round, lay down the book, and suddenly ask Mrs. 
Jones and 3'our daughters if they can answer? They cannot. 
They look at one another. They pretend they can answer. 
They can tell 3'ou the plot and principal characters of the last 
novel. Some of them know something about histor3', geologv', 
and so forth. But of the natural histor3' of home — Mchts, and 
for shame on }"0U all ! Honnis soyez 1 For shame on 3'OU ? for 
shame on us ! 

In the earl3' morning I hear a sort of call or jodel under my 
window : and know 'tis the matutinal milkman leaving his can 
at m3^ gate. O household gods ! have I lived all these 3'ears 
and don't know the price or the quantit3" of the milk which is 
delivered in that can? Why don't I know? As I live, if I live 
till to-morrow morning, as soon as I hear the call of Lactantius, 
I will dash out upon him. How many cows ? How much milk, 
on an average, all the 3'ear round? What rent? What cost of 
food and dair3^ servants? What loss of animals, and average 
cost of purchase? If I interested m3'self properl3' about my 
pint (or hogshead, whatever it be) of milk, all this knowledge 
would ensue ; all this additional interest in life. What is this 
talk of m3' friend, Mr. Lewes, about objects at the seaside, and 
so forth ? * Objects at the seaside ? Objects at the area-bell : 
objects before m3^ nose : objects which the butcher brings me 
in his tray : which the cook dresses and puts down before me, 
and over which I say grace ! My daily life is surrounded with 

* " Seaside Studies." By G. H. Lewes. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 243 

objects which ought to interest me. The pudding I eat (or 
refuse, that is neither here nor there ; and, between ourselves, 
what I have said about batter-pudding may be taken cum grano 
— we are not come to that yet, except for the sake of argument 
or illustration) — the pudding, I say, on mj' plate, the eggs 
that made it, the fire that cooked it, the tablecloth on which it 
is laid, and so forth — are each and all of these objects a knowl- 
edge of which I may acquire — a knowledge of the cost and 
production of which I might advantageously learn? To the 
man who does know these things, I say the interest of life is 
prodigiousl}^ increased. The milkman becomes a study to him ; 
the baker a being he curiously and tenderly examines. Go, 
Lewes, and clap a hideous sea- anemone into a glass : I will put 
a cabman under mine, and make a vivisection of a butcher. 

Lares, Penates, and gentle household gods, teach me to 
S3^mpathize with all that comes within m}' doors ! Give me an 
interest in the butcher's book. Let me look forward to the 
ensuing number of the grocer's account with eagerness. It 
seems ungrateful to my kitchen- chimnej^ not to know the cost 
of sweeping it ; and I trust that many a man who reads this, 
and muses on it, will feel, like the writer, ashamed of himself, 
and hang down his head humbly. 

Now, if to this household game you could add a little money 
interest, the amusement would be increased far beyond the 
mere money value, as a game at cards for sixpence is better 
than a rubber for nothing. If 3'ou can interest 3'ourself about 
sixpence, all life is invested with a new excitement. From 
sunrise to sleeping you can alwa3's be playing that game — 
with butcher, baker, coal-merchant, cabman, omnibus man — 
nay, diamond merchant and stockbroker. You can bargain for 
a guinea over the price of a diamond necklace, or for a six- 
teenth per cent in a transaction at the Stock Exchange. We 
all know men who have this facult3' who are not ungenerous 
with their money. They give it on great occasions. They are 
more able to help than 3"ou and I who spend ours, and sa3^ to 
poor Prodigal who comes to us out at elbow, " M3' dear fellow, 

1 should have been delighted : but I have alreacfy anticipated 
my quarter, and am going to ask 8crewb3^ if he can do any- 
thing for me." 

In this delightful, wholesome, ever-novel twopenn3- game, 
there is a danger of excess, as there is in ever3' other pastime 
or occupation of life. If 3^ou grow too eager for your twopence, 
the acquisition or the loss of it ma3^ affect 3'our peace of mind, 
and peace of mind is better than an3" amount of twopences. 



244 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

M3^ friend, the old-clothes'-man, whose agonies over the hat 
have led to this rambhng disquisition, has, I ver}' much fear, 
b}' a too eager pursuit of small profits, disturbed the equanimity 
of a mind that ought to be eas}^ and happy. ' ' Had I stood 
out," he thinks, " I might have had the hat for threepence,'" 
and he doubts whether, having given fourpence for it, he will 
ever get back his money. M3' good Shadrach, if you go through 
life passionatel}' deploring the irrevocable, and allow 3'ester- 
day's transactions to embitter the cheerfulness of to-day and 
to-morrow — as lief walk down to the Seine, souse in, hats, 
body, clothes-bag and all, and put an end to 3^our sorrow and 
sordid cares. Before and since Mr. Franklin wrote his pretty 
apologue of the Whistle have we not all made bargains of which 
we repented, and coveted and acquired objects for which we 
have paid too dearl^^ ! Who has not purchased his hat in some 
market or other? There is General M'Clellan's cocked hat for 
example : I dare say he was eager enough to wear it, and he 
has learned that it is bv no means cheerful wear. There were 
the militar}^ beavers of Messeigneurs of Orleans : * the}' wore 
them gallantl}* in the face of battle ; but I suspect the^^ were 
glad enough to pitch them into the James River and come home 
in mufti. Ah, mes amis! a chacun son schakot! I was looking 
at a bishop the other day, and thinking, "My right reverend 
lord, that broad-brim and rosette must bind your great broad 
forehead very tightl}-, and give 3^011 man}' a headache. A good 
eas3' wideawake were better for 3^011', and I would like to see 
that honest face with a cutt3'-pipe in the middle of it." There 
is m}' Lord Ma3-or. M3^ once dear lord, my kind friend, when 
3^om' two 3'ears' reign was over, did not 3'ou jump for jo\'^ and 
fling 3'our chapeau-bras out of window : and hasn't that hat 
cost 3^ou a i^rettj- bit of mone3'? There, in a splendid travelling 
chariot, in the sweetest bonnet, all trimmed with orange- 
blossoms and Chantilty lace, sits my Lad3^ Rosa, with old Lord 
Snowden b}' her side. Ah, Rosa ! what a price have 3^ou paid 
for that hat which 3^ou wear ; and is 3'our lad3'ship's coronet 
not pm'chased too dear ! Enough of hats. Sir, or Madam, 
I take off mine, and salute you with profound respect. 

* Two cadets of the House of Orleans who served as Volunteers under 
General M'Clellan in his campaign against Richmond. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 245 



ON ALEXANDRINES.* 

A LETTER TO SOME COUNTRY COUSINS. 

Dear Cousins, — Be pleased to receive herewith a packet 
of May all's photographs and copies of Illustrated News^ Illus- 
trated Times.) London Revieiv^ Queen., and Observer., each con- 
taining an account of the notable festivities of the past week. 
If, besides these remembrances of home, you have a mind to 
read a letter from an old friend, behold here it is. When I 
was at school, having left my parents in India, a good-natured 
captain or colonel would come sometimes and see us Indian 
boys, and talk to us about papa and mamma, and give us coins 
of the realm, and write to our parents, and say, " I drove over 
yesterday and saw Tommy at Dr. Birch's. I took him to the 
' George,' and gave him a dinner. His appetite is fine. Pie 
states that he is reading ' Cornelius Nepos,' with which he is 
much interested. His masters report," &c. And though Dr. 
Birch wrote by the same mail a longer, fuller, and official state- 
ment, I have no doubt the distant parents preferred the friend's 
letter, with its artless, possibly ungrammatical, account of their 
little darling. 

I have seen the young heir of Britain. These e3'es have 
beheld him and his bride, on Saturday in Pall Mall, and on 
Tuesday in the nave of St. George's Chapel at Windsor, when 
the young Princess Alexandra of Denmark passed by with her 
blooming procession of bridesmaids ; and half an hour later, 
when the Princess of Wales came forth from the chapel, her 
husband by her side robed in the purple mantle of the famous 
Order which his forefather established here five hundred years 
ago. We were to see her yet once again, when her open car- 
riage passed out of the Castle gate to the station of the near 
railwa}^ which was to convey her to Southampton. 

Since womanldnd existed, has any woman ever had such a 
greeting? At ten hours' distance, there is a citj' far more mag- 
nificent than oui's. With every respect for Kensington turn- 
pike, I own that the Arc de I'Etoile at Paris is a much finer 

* This paper, it is almost needless to say, was written just after th© 
marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in March, 1863. 



246 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

entrance to an imperial capital. In our black, orderless, zigzag 
streets, we can show nothing to compare with the magnificent 
array of the Rue de Rivoli, that enormous regiment of stone 
stretching for five miles and presenting arms before the Tuile- 
ries. Think of the late Fleet Prison and Waithman's Obelisk, 
and of the Place de la Concorde and the Luxor Stone ! ' ' The 
finest site in Europe," as Trafalgar Square has been called by 
some obstinate British optimist, is disfigured by trophies, foun- 
tains, columns, and statues so puerile, disorderly, and hideous 
that a lover of the arts must hang the head of shame as he 
passes, to see our dear old queen city arraying herself so ab- 
surdly ; but when all is said and done, we can show one or two 
of the greatest sights in the world. I doubt if any Roman fes- 
tival was as vast or striking as the Derby day, or if any Im- 
perial triumph could show such a prodigious muster of faithful 
people as our 3'oung Princess saw on Saturday, when the na- 
tion turned out to greet her. The calculators are squabbling 
about the numbers of hundreds of thousands, of millions, who 
came forth to see her and bid her welcome. Imagine beacons 
flaming, rockets blazing, yards manned, ships and forts salut- 
ing with their thunder, every steamer and vessel, ever}^ town 
and village from Ramsgate to Gravesend, swarming with happy 
gratulation ; young girls with flowers, scattering roses before 
her ; staid citizens and aldermen pushing and squeezing and 
panting to make the speech, and bow the knee, and bid her 
welcome ! Who is this who is honored with such a prodigious 
triumph, and received with a welcome so astonishing? A \^ear 
ago we had never heard of her. I think about her pedigree 
and famil}^ not a few of us are in the dark still, and I own, for 
my part, to be much puzzled b}^ the allusions of newspaper 
genealogists and bards and skalds to Vikings, Berserker-s, and 
so forth. But it would be interesting to know how manv hun- 
dreds of thousands of photographs of the fair bright face have 
by this time made it beloved and familiar in British homes. 
Think of all the quiet countr}' nooks from Land's End to Caith- 
ness, where kind e3'es have glanced at it. The farmer brings 
it home from market ; the curate from his visit to the Cathedral 
town ; the rustic folk peer at it in the little village shop-win- 
dow ; the squire's children gaze on it round the drawing-room 
table : every e3-e that beholds it looks tenderl}' on its bright 
beauty and sweet artless grace, and young and old pray God 
bless her. We have an elderly friend, (a certain Goodj' Two- 
shoes,) who inhabits, with many other old ladies, the Union 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 247 

House of the parish of St. Lazarus in Soho. One of your 
cousins from this house went to see her, and found Goody and 
her companion crones all in a flutter of excitement about the 
marriage. The whitewashed walls of their bleak dormitory 
were ornamented with prints out of the illustrated journals, 
and hung with festoons 'and true-lovers' knots of tape and 
colored paper ; and the old bodies had had a good dinner, and 
the old tongues were chirping and clacking awa}^, all eager, 
interested, sympathizing ; and one very elderl}' and rheumatic 
Good}^ who is obliged to keep her bed, (and has, I trust, an 
exaggerated idea of the cares attending on royalty,) said, 
" Pore thing, pore thing ! I pity her." Yes, even in that dim 
place there was a little brightness and a quavering huzza, a 
contribution of a mite subscribed by those dozen poor old 
widows to the treasure of loyalty with which the nation endows 
the Prince's bride. 

Three hundred years ago, when our dread Sovereign Lady 
Elizabeth came to take possession of her realm and capital city, 
Holingshed, if you please (whose pleasing history of course 3'^ou 
carr}^ about with you) , relates in his fourth volume folio, that 
— "At hir entring the citie, she was of the people received 
maruellous intierlie, as appeared by the assemblies, praiers, 
welcommings, cries, and all other signes which argued a woon- 
derfull earnest loue : " and at various halting-places on the roj'al 
progress children habited like angels appeared out of allegoric 
edifices and spoke verses to her — 

" "Welcome, O Queen, as much as heart can think, 
Welcome agahi, as much as tongue can tell, 
"Welcome to joyous tongues and hearts that will not shrink. 
God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well ! " 

Our new Princess, you may be sure, has also had her Alex- 
andrines, and many minstrels have gone before her singing 
her praises. Mr. Tupper, who begins in ver}^ great force and 
strength, and who proposes to give her no less than eight hun- 
dred thousand welcomes in the first twenty lines of his ode, is 
not satisfied with this most liberal amount of acclamation, but 
proposes at the end of his poem a still more magnificent sub- 
scrii)tion. Thus we begin, " A hundred thousand welcomes, a 
liun(h'('d tlioiisand welcomes." (In my copy the figures are in 
the u-oll-known Arabic numerals, but let u« have the numbers 
literally accurate :) — 



248 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



' ' A hundred thousand welcomes ! 
A himdred thousand welcomes ! 

And a hundred thousand more ! 
happy heart of England, 
Shout aloud and sing, land, 
As no land sang before ; 
And let the pgeaus soar 
And ring from shore to shore, 
A hundred thousand welcomes, 
And a hundred thousand more ; 



And let the cannons roar 
The joy-stunned city o'er. 
And let the steeples chime it 
A hmidred thousand welcomes 
And a hundred thousand more ; 
And let the people rhyme it 
From neighbor's door to door. 
From every man's heart's core, 
A hundred thousand welcomes 
And a hundred thousand more." 



This contribution, in twenty not long lines, of 900,000 (say 
nine hundred thousand) welcomes is handsome indeed ; and 
shows that when our bard is inchned to be liberal, he does not 
look to the cost. But what is a sum of 900,000 to his further 
proposal ? — 



" O let all these declare it, 
Let miles of shouting swear it, 

In all the years of yore, 

Unparalleled before ! 
And thou, most welcome Wand'rer 

Across the Northern Water, 
Our England's Alexandra, 

Our dear adopted daughter — 



Lay to thine heart, conned o'er and o'er, 
In future years remembered well. 
The magic fervor of this spell 

That shakes the land from shore to shore, 

And makes all hearts and eyes brim o'er ; 
Our hvmdred thousand welcomes, 
Our fifty million welcomes. 

And a himdred million more ! '' 



Here we have, besides the most liberal previous subscrip- 
tion, a further call on the public for no less than one hundred and 
fift}'^ million one hundred thousand welcomes for her Royal High- 
ness. How much is this per head for all of us in the three king- 
doms? Not above five welcomes apiece, and I am sure many of 
us have given more than five hurrahs to the fair 3'oung Princess. 

Each man sings according to his voice, and gives in propor- 
tion to his means. The guns at Sheerness "from their ada- 
mantine lips" (which had spoken, in quarrelsome old times a 
very different language,) roared a hundred thundering wel- 
comes to the fair Dane. The maidens of England strewed 
roses before her feet at Gravesend when she landed. Mr. 
Tupper, with the million and odd welcomes, may be compared 
to the thundering fleet ; Mr. Chorley's song, to the flowerets 
scattered on her Royal Highness's happy and carpeted path : — 

" Blessings on that fair face ! 

Safe on the shore 
Of her home-dwelling place, 

Stranger no more. 
Love, from her household shrine, 

Keep sorrow far ! 
May for her hawthorn twine, 
June bring sweet eglantine, 
Autumn, the golden vine, 

Dear Northern Star ! " 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 249 

Hawthorn for May, eglantine for June, and in autumn a little 
tass of the golden vine for our Northern Star. I am sure no 
one will grudge the Princess these simple enjoyments, and of 
the produce of the last-named pleasing plant, I wonder how 
many bumpers were drunk to her health on the happy da}- of 
her bridal? As for the Laureate's verses, I would respectfully 
liken his Highness to a giant showing a beacon torch on " a 
windy headland." His flaring torch is a pine-tree, to be sure, 
which nobody can wield but himself. He waves it : and four 
times in the midnight he shouts mightily, " Alexandra! " and 
the Pontic pine is whirled into the ocean and Pinceladus goes 
home. 

AYhose muse, whose cornemuse, sounds with such plaintive 
sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Mussel- 
burgh he rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up 
to Leith shore to hear the exquisite music? Sweeter piper 
Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who 
has given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty. When 
a most beautiful, celebrated and unfortunate princess whose 
memory the Professor loves — when Marj^, wife of Francis the 
Second, King of France, and by her own right proclaimed 
Queen of Scotland and England (poor soul!), entered Paris 
with her* 3'oung bridegroom, good Peter Ronsard wrote of 
her — 

" Toi qui as veu Texcellence de celle 
Qui rend le ciel de I'Escosse envieux, 
Dy hardiment, contentez a^ous raes yeux, 
Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle." * 

'"• Vous ne verrez Jamais chose plus belle " Here is an Alexan- 
drine written three hundred 3'ears ago, as simple as hon Jour. 
Professor Aytoun is more ornate. After elegantly compli- 
menting the spring, and a description of her Roj'al Highness's 
well-known ancestors the " Berserkers," he bursts forth — 

" The Rose of Denmark comes, the Royal Bride ! 
loveliest Rose ! our paragon and pride — » 

Choice of the Prince whom England holds so dear — 
What homage shall we pay 
To one who has no peer ? 
What can the bard or wildered minstrel say 
More than the peasant who on bended knee 
Breathes from his heart an earnest prayer for thee? 

* Quoted in Mignet's " Life of Mary." 



250 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Words are not fair, if that they would express 

Is fairer still ; so lovers in dismay 

Stand all abashed before that loveliness 

They worsiiip most, but find no words to pray. 

Too sweet for incense ! (braro!) Take our loves instead — 

Most freely, truly, and devoutly given ; 

Our prayer for blessings on that gentle head, 

For earthly happiness and rest in Heaven ! 

May never sorrow dim those dove-like eyes, 

But peace as pure as reigned in Paradise, 

Calm and untainted on creation's eve, 

Attend thee still ! May holy angels," &c. 

This is all very well, m}^ dear countr}' cousins. But will 
3^ou say "Amen" to this prayer? I won't. Assuredly our 
fair Princess will shed man}- tears out of the " dovelike e^'es," 
or the heart will be little worth. Is she to know no parting, 
no care, no anxious longing, no tender watches by the sick, to 
deplore no friends and kindred, and feel no grief? Heaven 
forbid ! When a bard or wildered minstrel writes so, best 
accept his own confession, that he is losing his head. On the 
day of her entrance into London who looked more bright and 
happy than the Princess? On the day of the marriage, the 
fair face wore its marks of care already', and looked out quite 
grave, and frightened almost, under the wreaths and lace and 
orange-flowers. Would you have had her feel no tremor? A 
maiden on the bridegroom's threshold, a Princess led up to the 
steps of a throne? I think her pallor and doubt became her as 
well as her smiles. That, I can tell 3'ou, was our vote who 
sat in X compartment, let us say, in the nave of St. George's 
Chapel at AVindsor, and saw a part of one of the brightest 
ceremonies ever ])erformed there. 

My dear cousin Mary, you have an account of the dresses ; 
and I promise you there were princesses besides the bride 
whom it did the ej'es good to behold. Around the bride sailed 
a bevy of young creatures so fair, wliite, and graceful that I 
thought of those fairy-tale beauties who are sometimes prin- 
cesses, and sometimes white swans. The Royal Princesses 
and the Royal Knights of the Garter swept by in prodigious 
robes and trains of |)urple velvet, thirty shillings a yard, my 
dear, not of course inchiding the lining, which, I have no doubt, 
was of the i-ichest satin, or that costly '"•miniver" which we 
used to read abont in poor Jerrold's writings. Tiie young 
princes were habited in kilts; and by the side of the Princess 
Ro3*al trotted such a little wee solemn Highlander! He is the 
young heir and chief of the famous clan of Brandenburg. His 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 251 

eyrie is amongst the Eagles, and I pray no barm may bsfall the 
dear little chieftain. 

The heralds in their tabards \vere inarvellons to behold, and 
a nod from Rouge Croix gave me the keenest gratification. I 
tried to catch Garter's eye, but either I couldn't or he wouldn't. 
In his robes, he is like one of the 'Three Kings in old missal 
illuminations. Goldstick in waiting is even more splendid. 
With his gold rod and robes and trappings of many colors, he 
looks like a royal enchanter, and as if he had raised up all this 
scene of glamour by a wave of his glittering wand. The silver 
trumpeters wear such quaint caps, as those I have humbly tried 
to depict on the playful heads of children. Behind the trump- 
eters came a drum-bearer, on whose back a gold-laced drummer 
drubbed his march. 

When the silver clarions had blown, and under a clear 
chorus of white-robed children chanting round the organ, 
the noble procession passed into the chapel, and was hidden 
from our sight for a while, there was silence, or from the 
inner chapel ever so faint a hum. Then hymns arose, and 
in the lull we knew that prayers were being said, and the sacred 
rite performed which joined Albert Edward to Alexandra his 
wife. I am sure hearty prayers were offered outside the gate 
as well as within for that princely young pair, and for their 
Mother and Queen. The peace, the freedom, the happiness, 
the order which her rule guarantees, are part of my birthright 
as an Englishman, and 1 bless God for my share. Where else 
shall I find such liberty of action, thought, speech, or laws 
which protect me so well? Her part of her compact with her 
people, w'hat sovereign ever better performed? If ours sits 
apart from the festivities of the day, it is because she suffers 
from a arrief so recent that the loval heart (cannot master it as 
yet, and remains treu und fist to a beloved memor}'. A part 
of the music which celebrates the day's service was composed 
by the husband who is gone to the place wheie the just and 
pure of life meet the reward i)romise(l by the Father of all of 
us to good and faithful servants who have well done here below. 
As this one gives in his account, surely we may remember 
how the Prince was the friend of all peaceful arts and learning; 
how he was true and fast idwavs to dutv, liomc, honor; how, 
through a life of complicated trials, he was sagacious, lighteous, 
active and self-denying. And as we trace in the young faces 
of his many children the father's features and likeness, what 
Euglishmati will not pray that they may have inherited also 



252 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

some of the great qualities which won for the Prince Consort 
the love and respect of our countr}' ? 

The papers tell us how, on the night of the marriage of the 
Prince of Wales, all over England and Scotland illuminations 
were made, the poor and children were feasted, and in village 
and city thousands of kindly schemes were devised to mark the 
national happiness and sj'mpathy. " The bonfire on Copt- 
point at Folkestone was seen in France," the Telegraph says, 
^'more clearty than even the French marine lights could be 
seen at Folkestone." Long ma}- the fire continue to burn ! 
There are European coasts (and inland places) where the 
liberty light has been extinguished, or is so low that 3'ou can't 
see to read by it — there are great Atlantic shores where it 
flickers and smokes verj^ gloomily. Let us be thankful to the 
honest guardians of ours, and for the kind sky under which it 
burns bright and steady. 



ON A MEDAL OF GEOEGE THE FOUETH. 

Before me lies a coin bearing the image and superscription 
of King George IV., and of the nominal value of two-and-six- 
pence. But an official friend at a neighboring turnpike saj^s 
the piece is hopelessty bad ; and a chemist tested it, returning 
a like unfavorable opinion. A cabman, who had brought me 
from a Club, left it with the Club porter, appealing to the gent 
who gave it a pore cabbj", at ever so much o'clock of a rainy 
night, which he hoped he would give him another. I have 
taken that cabman at his word. He has been provided with a 
sound coin. The bad piece is on the table before me, and shall 
have a hole drilled through it, as soon as this essa}' is written, 
b}^ a lo3^al subject who does not desire to deface the Sovereign's 
image, but to protest against the rascal who has tjiken his name 
in vain. Fid. Def. indeed ! Is this what 3'ou call defending 
the faith? You dare to forge 3^our Sovereign's name, and pass 
3'our scoundrel pewter as his silver? I wonder who 3'OU are, 
wretch and most consummate trickster? This forger3' is so 
complete that even now I am deceived b3' it — I can't see the 
difference between the base and sterling metal. Perhaps this 
piece is a little lighter ; — I don't know. A little softer : — is 
it ? I have not bitten it, not being a connoisseur in the tasting of 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 253 

pewter or silver. I take the word of three honest men, though 
it goes against me : and though I have given two-and-sixpence 
worth of honest consideration for the counter, I shall not attempt 
to implicate anybody else in my misfortune, or transfer my ill- 
luck to a deluded neighbor. 

I say the imitation is so curiously successful, the stamping, 
milling of the edges, lettering, and so forth, are so neat, that 
even now, when my eyes are open, I cannot see the cheat. 
How did those experts, the cabman, and pikeman, and trades- 
man, come to find it out? How do they happen to be more 
familiar with pewter and silver than I am? You see, I put out 
of the question another point which I might argue without fear of 
defeat, namely, the cabman's statement that 1 gave him this bad 
piece of money. Suppose ever}' cabman who took me a shilling 
fare were to drive awa}' and return presently with a bad coin and 
an assertion that I had given it to him ! This would be absurd 
and mischievous ; an encouragement of vice amongst men who 
alread}- are subject to temptations. Being homo^ I think if I 
were a cabman myself, I might sometimes stretch a furlong or 
two in my calculation of distance. But don't come ticlce^ my 
man, and tell me I have given you a bad half-crown. No, no I 
I have paid once like a gentleman, and once is enough. For 
instance, during the Exhibition time I was stopped b^^ an old 
country-woman in black, with a huge umbrella, who, bursting 
into tears, said to me, " Master, be this the way to Harlow, in 
Essex?" "This the way to Harlow? This is the way to 
Exeter, my good ladj', and 30U will arrive there if 3'ou walk 
about 170 miles in j'our present direction," I answered cour- 
teously, replying to the old creature. Then she fell a-sobbing 
as though her old heart would break. She had a daughter 
a-dying at Harlow. She had walked alread}^ " vifty dree mile 
that day." Tears stopped the rest of her discourse, so artless, 
genuine, and abundant that — I own the truth — I gave her, 
in I believe genuine silver, a piece of the exact size of that coin 
which forms the subject of this essay. Well. About a month 
since, near to the very spot where I had met my old woman, I 
was accosted b}' a person in black, a person in a large draggled 
cap, a person with a huge umbrella, who was beginning, " I sa}', 

Master, can you tell me if this be the way to Har " but 

here she stopped. Her eyes goggled wildly. She started from 
me, as Macbeth turned from Macduff. She would not engage 
with me. It was my old friond of Harlow, in Essex. I dare 
say she has informecl many other people of her daughter's illness, 
and her anxiety to be put upon the right way to Harlow. Not 



254 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

long since a very gentleman-like man, Major Delamere let us 
call him (I like the title of Major very much), requested to see 
me, named a dead gentleman who he said had been our mutual 
friend, and on the strength of this mutual acquaintance, begged 
me to cash his cheque for five pounds ! 

It is these things, m}' dear sir, which serve to make a man 
c\'nical. I do conscientiously believe that had I cashed the 
Major's cheque there would have been a difficulty about pa}-- 
nicnt on the part of the respected bankers on whom he drew. 
On 30ur honor and conscience, do you think that old widow 
who was w^alking from Tunbridge Wells to Harlow had a daugh- 
ter ill, and was an honest woman at all? The daughter couldn't 
always, you see, be being ill, and her mother on her way to her 
dear child through H3'de Park. In the same wa}' some habitual 
sneerers may be inclined to hint that the cabman's story was an 
invention — or at any rate, choose to ride off (so to speak) on 
the doubt. No. M^- opinion, I ow^n, is unfavorable as regards 
the widow from Tunbridge Wells, and Major Delamere ; but, 
believing the cabman was honest, I am glad to think he w^as 
not injured b}' the reader's most humble servant. 

What a queer, exciting life this rogue's march must be : this 
attempt of the bad half-crowns to get into circulation ! Had 
my distinguished friend the Major knocked at man3' doors that 
morning, before operating on mine? The sport must be some- 
thing akin to the pleasure of tiger or elephant hunting. What 
ingenuitj" the sportsman must have in tracing his prey — what 
daring and caution in coming upon him ! What coolness in 
facing the angry animal (for, after all, a man on whom you 
draw a cheque a bout portcmt will be angry). What a delicious 
thrill of triumph, if you can bring him down ! If I have money 
at the banker's and draw for a portion of it over the counter, 
that is mere prose — any dolt can do that. But, having no 
balance, say I drive up in a cab, present a cheque at Coutts's, 
and, receiving the amount, drive off? What a glorious morn- 
ing's sport that has been ! How superior in excitement to the 
common transactions of ever^'-day life ! .... I must tell a 
story ; it is against myself, I know, but it will out, and perhaps 
my mind will be the easier. 

More than twenty years ago, in an island remarkable for 
its verdure, I met four or five times one of the most agreeable 
companions with whom I have passed a night. I heard that 
evil times had come upon this gentleman ; and, overtaking him 
in a road near m}' own house one evening, I asked him to come 
home to dinner. In two days, he was at my door again. At 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 255 

breakfast- time was this second* appearance. He was in a cab 
(of course he was in a cab, they alwa3's are, these unfortunate, 
these courageous men). To den}^ myself was absurd. My 
friend could see me over the parlor blinds, surrounded by my 
family, and cheerfullj' partaking of the morning meal. Miolit 
he have a word with me? and can you imagine its purport? By 
the most provoking delay, his uncle the admiral not being able 
to come to town till Friday' — would I cash him a cheque? I 
need not sa}^ it would be paid on Saturdaj^ without fail. I tell 
3'ou that man went awa}^ with money in his pocket, and I 
regret to add that his gallant relative has not come to town 
yet! 

Laying down the pen, and sinking back in my chair, here, 
perhaps, I fall info a five minutes' reverie, and think of one, two, 
three, half a dozen cases in which I have been content to accept 
that sham promissor}' coin in return for sterling mone}- advanced. 
Not a reader, whatever his age, but could tell a like story. I 
vow and believe there are men of fifty, who will dine well to- 
day, who have not paid their school debts yet, and who have 
not taken up their long-protested promises to pay. Tom, Dick, 
Harry, my boys, I owe you no grudge, and rather relish that 
wince with which 3'ou will read these meek lines and saj^ " He 
means me." Poor Jack in Hades ! Do you remember a certain 
pecuniary transaction, and a little sum of money 3'Ou borrowed 
"until the meeting of Parliament?" Parliament met often in 
3'our lifetime : Parliament has met since : but I think I should 
scarce be more surprised if your ghost glided into the room now, 
and laid down the amount of our little account, than I should 
have been if you had paid me in 3'our lifetime with the actual 
acceptances of the Bank of England. You asked to borrow, but 
you never intended to \y^\. I would as soon have believed that 
a promissory note of Sir John Falstaff (accepted by Messrs. 
Bai'dolph and Nym, and pa3able in Aldgate,) would be as sure 
to find payment, as that note of the departed — na3', lamented 
— Jack Thiif'tless. 

He who borrows, meaning to pay, is quite a different person 
from the individual here described. Many — most, I hope — 
took Jack's promise for what it was worth — and quite well 
knew that when he said, " Lend me," he meant " Give me" 
twent3' pounds. "Give me change for this half-crown," said 
Jack ; " I know it's a pewter piece ; " and you ga\'e him the 
change in honest silver, and pocketed the counterfeit gravely. 

What a queer consciousness that must be which accompanies 
such a man in his sleeping, in his waking, in his walk through 



256 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

life, b}' his fireside with his children round him! " For what 
we are going to receive," &c. — he sa3's grace before his dinner. 
" My dears ! Shall I help you to some mutton? I robbed the 
butcher of the meat. I don't intend to pay him. Johnson my 
bo3% a glass of champagne? Very good, isn't it? Not too 
sweet. Forty-six. I get it from So-and-so, whom I intend to 
cheat." As eagles go forth and bring home to their eaglets the 
lamb or the pavid kid, I sa}^ there are men who live and victual 
their nests by plunder. We all know highwa}' robbers in white 
neck-cloths, domestic bandits, marauders, passers of bad coin. 
What was 3'onder cheque which Major Delamere proposed I 
should cash but a piece of bad mone}' ? What was Jack Thrift- 
less's promise to pa}' ? Having got his boot}', I fanc}' Jack or 
the Major returning home, and wife and children gathering 
round about him. Poor wife and chiklren ! The}- respect papa 
ver}" likely. They don't know he is false coin. Maj'be the 
wife has a dreadful inkling of the truth, and, sickening, tries to 
hide it from the dauo^hters and sons. Mavbe she is an accom- 
plice : herself a brazen forger^^ If Turpin and Jack Sheppard 
were married, ver}- likel}' Mesdames Sheppard and Turpin did 
not know, at first, what their husbands' real profession was, 
and fancied, when the men left home in the morning, the}^ onlj' 
went Siwa,y to follow some regular and honorable business. 
Then a suspicion of the truth ma}' have come : then a dreadful 
revelation ; and presently we have the guilt}^ pair robbing to- 
gether, or passing forged money each on his own account. You 
know Doctor Dodd ? I wonder whether his wife knows that he 
is a forger, and scoundrel? Has she had any of the plunder, 
think 3'ou, and were the darling cliildren's new dresses bought 
with it? The Doctor's sermon last Sunday was certainl}' charm- 
ing, and we all cried. Ah, m}' poor Dodd ! Whilst he is 
preaching most beautifully, pocket-handkerchief in hand, he 
is peering over the pulpit cushions, looking out piteously for 
Messrs. Peachum and Lockit from the police-oflfice. B>' Doctor 
Dodd 3'ou understand I would typify the rogue of respectable 
exterior, not committed to gaol 3'et, but not undiscovered. We 
all know one or two such. This ver}^ sermon perhaps will be 
read by some, or more likely — for, depend upon it, 3'our solemn 
h3'pocritic scoundrels don't care much for light literature — 
more likel3^ I say, this discourse will be read % some of their 
wives, who think, "Ah merc3- ! does that horrible C3'nical 
wretch know how my poor husband blacked my eye, or ab- 
stracted mamma's silver teapot, or forced me to write So-and- 
so's name on that piece of stamped paper, or what not ? " My 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 257 

good creature, I am not angry with you. If 3:our husband has 
broken your nose, you will vow that he had authority over 
your person, and a right to demohsh any part of it : if he has 
conveyed away your mamma's teapot, you will say that she 
gave it to him at your marriage, and it was very ugly, and what 
not? if he takes yom aunt's watch, and you love him, you will 

carry it ere long to the pawnbroker's, and perjure yourself 

oh, how you will perjure 3^ourself — in the witness-box ! I know 
this is a degrading view of woman's noble nature, her exalted 
mission, and so forth, and so forth. I know yoxx will say this is 
bad morality. Is it? Do you, or do 3'ou not, expect youi 
womankind to stick by you for better or for worse ? Say I have 
committed a forgery, and the officers come in search of me, is 
my wife, Mrs. Dodd, to show them into the dining-room and 
say, "Pray step in, gentlemen! My husband has just come 
home from church. That bill with my Lord Chesterfield's ac- 
ceptance, I am bound to own, was never written by his lord- 
ship, and the signature is in the doctor's handwriting? " I say, 
would any man of sense or honor, or fine feeling, praise his wife 
for telling the truth under such circumstances? Suppose she 
made a fine grimace, and said, " Most painful as my position 
is, most deeply as I feel for my William, yet truth must prevail, 
and I deeply lament to state that the beloved partner of my life 
did commit the flagitious act with which he is charged, and is at 
this present moment located in the two-pair back, up the chim- 
ney, whither it is my duty to lead you." Wh}^, even Dodd him- 
self, who was one of the greatest humbugs who ever lived, would 
not have had the face to say that he approved of his wife telling 
the truth in such a case. Would yoxx have had Flora Mac- 
donald beckon the oflScers, saying, "This way, gentlemen! 
You will find the young chevalier asleep in that cavern." Or 
don't you prefer her to be splendide mendax^ and read}^ at all 
risks to save him? If ever I lead a rebellion, and my women 
betray me, ma}^ I be hanged but I will not forgive them : and if 
ever I steal a teapot, and my women don't stand up for me, pass 
the article under their shawls, whisk down the street with it, 
outbluster the policeman, and utter an}^ amount of fibs before 
Mr. Beak, those beings are not what I take them to be, and — 
for a fortune — I won't give them so much as a bad half- 
crown. 

Is conscious guilt a source of unmixed pain to the bosom 
which harbors it? Has not 3'our criminal, on the contrary, an 
excitement, an enjo3'ment within quite unknown to you and me 
who never did anything wrong in our lives ? The housebreaker 

17 



258 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

must snatch a fearful J03' as he walks unchallenged by the po- 
liceman with his sack full of spoons and tankards. Do not 
cracksmen, when assembled together, entertain themselves with 
stories of glorious old burglaries which they or b3'gone heroea 
have committed ? But that ni}' age is mature and my habits 
formed, I should really just like to try a little criminaht}'. Fancy 
passing a forged bill to your banker ; calling on a friend and 
sweeping his sideboard of plate, his hall of umbrellas and coats ; 
and then going home to dress for dinner, say — and to meet a 
bishop, a judge, and a police magistrate or so, and talk more 
morally than any man at table ! How I should chuckle (as my 
host's spoons clinked softl3' in my pocket) whilst I was uttering 
some noble speech about virtue, dut^', charit}' ! I wonder do we 
meet garroters in society'? In an average tea-party, now, how 
manv returned convicts are there? Does John Footman, when 
he asks permission to go and spend the evening with some 
friends, pass his time in thuggee ; wayla>' and strangle an old 
gentleman, or two ; let himself into your house, with the house- 
key of course, and appear as usual with the shaving-water 
when you ring your bell in the morning? The very possibility 
of such a suspicion invests John with a new and romantic in- 
terest in mv mind. Behind the grave pohteness of his coun- 
tenance I tr}' and read the lurking treason. Full of this pleas- 
ing subject, I have been talking thief-stories with a neighbor. 
The neighbor tells me how some friends of hers used to keep a 
jewel-box under a bed in their room ; and, going into the room, 
thev thouo'ht they heard a noise under the bed. Thev had the 
courage to look. The cook was under the bed — under the bed 
with the jewel-box. Of course she said she had come for pur- 
poses connected with her business ; but this was absurd. A 
cook under a bed is not there for i)rofessional purposes. A re- 
lation of mine had a box containing diamonds under her bed, 
which diamonds she told me were to be mine. Mine ! One 
day, at dinner-time, between the entrees and the roast, a cab 
drove away from m}' relative's house containing the box wherein 
lay the diamonds. John laid the dessert, brought the coffee, 
waited all the eveningr — and oh, how friohtened he was when 
he came to learn that his mistress's box had been conveyed out 
of her own room, and it contained diamonds — '' Law bless us, 
did it now?" I wonder whether John's subsequent career has 
been prosperous? Perhaps the gentlemen from Bow Street were 
all in the wrong when they agreed in susp3cting John as the 
author of the robbery. His noble nature was hurt at the sus- 
picion. You conceive he would not like to remain in a family 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 259 

where they were mean enough to suspect him of stealing a 
jewel-box out of a bedroom — and tlie injured man and my rela- 
tives soon parted. But, inclining (with my usual cynicism) to 
think that he did steal the valuables, think of his life for the 
month or two whilst he still remains hi the service ! He shows 
the officers over the house, agrees with them that the coup must 
have been made hy persons familiar with it ; gives them every 
' assistance ; pities his master and mistress with a manly com- 
passion ; points out what a cruel misfortune it is to himself as 
an honest man, with his livnig to get and his family to provide 
for, that this suspicion should tall on hira. Finally he takes 
leave of his place,* with a deep, though natural melancholy that 
ever he had accepted it. What's a thousand pounds to gentle- 
folks ! A loss, certainly, but they will live as well without the 
diamonds as with them. But to John his Hhhonor was worth 
more than diamonds, his Hhonor was. Whohever is to give 
him back his character? Who is to prevent hany one from say- 
ing, '' Ho yes. This is the footman which was in the family 
where the diamonds was stole ? " &c. 

I wonder has John prospered in life subsequently? If he 
is innocent he does not interest me in the least. The interest 
of the case lies in John's behavior supposing him to be guilty. 
Imagine the smiling face, the daily service, the orderly per- 
formance of duty, whilst within John is suffering pangs lest 
discovery should overtake him. Every bell of the door which 
he is obliged to open maj' bring a police officer. The accom- 
plices may peach. What an exciting life John's must have 
been for a while. And now, years and years after, when pur- 
suit has long ceased, and detection is impossible, does he ever 
revert to the little transaction? Is it possible those diamonds 
cost a thousand pounds? What a rogue the fence must have 
been who only gave him so and so ! And I pleasingly picture 
to myself an old ex-footman and an ancient receiver of stolen 
goods meeting and talking over this matter, which dates from 
times so early that her present Majest^-'s lair image could only 
just have begun to be coined or forged. 

I choose to take John at the time when his little peccadillo 
is suspected, perhaps, but when there is no specific charge of 
robber^' against him. He is not 3'et convicted : he is not even 
on his trial; how then can we venture to say he is guilt}^? 
Now^ think what scores of men and women walk the world in a 
like predicament ; and wjiat false coin passes current ! Pinch- 
beck strives to pass off his histor}* as sound coin. Pie knows it 
is only base metal, washed over with a thin varnish of learning. 



260 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Polupliloisbos puts his sermons in circulation : sounding brass, 
lacquered over with white metal, and marked with the stamp 
and image of piet}'. What say you to Drawcansir's reputation 
as a militarj' commander ? to Tibbs's pretensions to be a fine 
gentleman? to Sapphira's claims as a poetess, or Rodoessa's 
as a beauty? His braver}^, his pietj^, high birth, genius, beauty 
— each of these deceivers would palm his falsehood on us, and 
have us accept his forgeries as sterling coin. And we talk here, 
please to observe, of weaknesses rather than crimes. Some of 
us have more serious things to hide than a yellow cheek behind 
a raddle of rouge, or a white poll under a wig of jetty curls. 
You know, neighbor, there are not only false teeth in this 
world, but false tongues : and some make up a bust and an 
appearance of strength with padding, cotton, and what not? 
while another kind of artist tries to take 3'ou in by wearing un- 
der his waistcoat, and perpetuall}- thumping, an immense sham 
heart. Dear sir, may yours and mine be found, at the right 
time, of the proper size and in the right place. 

And what has this to do with half-crowns, good or bad? Ah, 
friend ! ma}' our coin, battered, and clipped, and defaced though 
it be, be proved to be Sterling Silver on the day of the Great 
Assay ! 



"STKANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPER" 

Before the Duke of York's column, and between the 
" Athenaeum " and " United Service " Clubs, I have seen more 
than once, on the esplanade, a preacher holding forth to a little 
congregation of badauds and street-boys, whom he entertains 
with a discourse on the crimes of a rapacious aristocracy, or 
warns of the imminent peril of their own souls. Sometimes 
this orator is made to " move on " by brutal policemen. Some- 
times, on a Sunday, he points to a white head or two visible in 
the windows of the Clubs to the right and left of him, and vol- 
unteers a statement that those quiet and elderly Sabbath- 
breakers will verv soon be called from this world to another, 
where their lot will by no means be so comfortable as that 
which the reprobates enjoy here, in their arm-chairs by theh* 
snug fires. 

At the end of last month, had I been a Pall Mall preacher, I 
would have liked to send a whip round to all the Clubs in St. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 261 

James's, and convoke the few members remaining in London to 
hear a discourse suh Dio on a text from the Observer newspaper. 
I would have taken post under the statue of Fame, sa}', where 
she stands distributing wreaths to the three Crimean Guards- 
men. (The crossing-sweeper does not obstruct tlie path, and I 
suppose is away at his villa on Sunda3's.) And, when the con- 
gregation was prett;>' quiet, I would have begun : — 

In the O^^errer of the 27th September, 1863, in the fifth page 
and the fourth column, it is thus written : — 

" The codicil appended to the will of the late Lord Clj'de, 
executed at Chatham, and bearing the signature of Clyde, F. 
M., is written, strange to say, on a sheet of paper bearing the 
'• AthencBum Club' mark." 

What the codicil is, my dear brethren, it is not our business 
to inquire. It conveys a benefaction to a faithful and attached 
friend of the good Field-Marshal. The gift may be a lakh of 
rupees, or it may be a house and its contents — furniture, 
plate, and wine-cellar. M}^ friends, I know the wine-merchant, 
and, for the sake of the legatee, hope heartilj- that the stock is 
large. 

Am I wrong, dear brethren, in supposing that 3'ou expect a 
preacher to say a seasonable word on death here? If you 
don't, I fear you are but little familiar with the habits of 
preachers, and are but lax hearers of sermons. We might 
contrast the vault where the warrior's remains lie shrouded and 
coffined, with that in which his worldly provision of wine is 
stowed awa}^ Spain and Portugal and France — all the lands 
which supplied his store — as hardy and obedient subaltern, as 
resolute captain, as colonel daring but prudent — he has visited 
the fields of all. In India and China he marches alwa3's uncon- 
quered ; or at the head of his dauntless Highland brigade he 
treads the Crimean snow ; or he rides from conquest to con- 
quest in India once more ; succoring his countrj-men in the 
hour of their utmost need ; smiting down the scared mutiny, 
and trampling out the embers of rebellion ; at the head of an 
heroic arm}-, a consummate chief. And now his glorious old 
sword is sheathed, and his honors are won ; and he has bought 
him a house, and stored it with modest cheer for his friends 
(the good old man put water in his own wine, and a glass or 
two sufficed him) — behold the end comes, and his legatee 
inherits these modest possessions b}^ virtue of a codicil to his 
lordship's will, written, ^^ strange to sag, upon a sheet of paper, 
bearing the ''Athenceum Club ' mark." 

It is to this part of the text, my brethren, that I propose to 



262 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

address mj'self particularly, and if the remarks I make are 
offensive to anv of you, yon know the doors of our meetino;- 
house are open, and yon can walk out when yon will. Ai'ound 
ns are niagnincent halls and palaces frequented by such a mul- 
titude of men as not even the Roman Foi'um assembled together. 
Yonder are the Martium Mud the Palladium. Next to tlie Pal- 
ladium is the elegant Viatorinm, which Barry gracefully stole 
from Rome. By its side is the massive Relbrmatorium : and 
<lie — the Ultratorinm rears its gi-anit-» columns beyond. Ex- 
t.'uding down the street palace after palace rises magnificent, 
and under their lofty roofs warriors and. lawyers, merchants and 
nol)les, scholnrs and seamen, the wealthy, the poor, the busy, 
the idle assc^mble. Into the halls built down this little street 
and its neighborhood the principal men of all London come to 
hear or iin|)art the news ; and the affairs of the state or of 
private individuals, the quarrels of empires o)* of authors, the 
movements of the court, or the splendid vagaries of fashion, 
the intrigues of stntesuuiu or of persons of another sex yet 
more wily, the Inst news of battles in the great occidental conti- 
nents, nay, the latest betting for the horse-races, or the advent 
ofadnncernt the theatre — all that men do is discussed in 
these Pall Mall ngorffi, where we of London daily assemble. 

Now among so many talkers, consider how many false re- 
ports must ffy about : in such multitudes imagine how many 
disappointed men there must be; how many chatterboxes; 
how many feeble and credulous (whereof I mark somo speci- 
mens in my congregaticm) ; how many mean, rancorous, jH'one 
to believe ill of their betters, eager to find fault; and then, my 
brethren, fancy how the words of my text must have been read 
and received in Pall jNIall ! (I perceive several of the congre- 
sration lookinii- most uncomfortable. One old boy with a dved 
moustache tui'ns i)urple in the face, and struts back to the 
jMartium : another, with a shrug of the shoulder and a murmur 
of '• Rubbish." slinks away in the direction of the Togatorium, 
and the preacher continues.) The will of Field-Marshal Lord 
Clyde — signed at ChotJinnu mind, where his lordship died — 
is written, stnnKjc. to srn/, on a sheet of paper bearing the 
" Athenjvum Club" mark ! 

The inference is obvious. A man cannot o"et Athenseum 
paper except at the " Athena?um." Such paper is not sold at 
Chatham, where the last codicil to his lordship's will is dated. 
And so the painful belief is forced upon us, that a Peer, a 
Field-Marshal, wealthy, respected, illustrious, could pocket 
paper at his Club, and carry it away with him to the country. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 263 

"One fancies the hall-porter conscious of the old lord's iniqnit}', 
and holding down his head as the Marshal passes the door. 
What is that roll which his lordship carries? Is it his Marshal's 
baton gloriousl}' won? No; it is a roll of foolscap conveyed 
from the Club. What has he on his breast, under his great- 
coat? Is it his Star of India? No; it is a bundle of en- 
velopes, bearing the head of Minerva, some sealing-wax, and 
a half-score of pens. 

Let us imagine how in the hall of one or other of these Clubs 
this strange anecdote will be discussed. 

"Notorious screw," says Sneer. "The poor old fellow's 
avarice has long been known." 

" Suppose he wishes to imitate the Duke of Marlborough," 
savs Simper. 

" " Habit of looting contracted in India, you know ; ain't so 
easv to get over, you know," says Snigger. 

" When officers dined with him in India,*' remarks Solemn, 
"it w^as notorious that the spoons were all of a difi'crent pat- 
tern." 

" Perhaps it isn't true. Suppose he wrote his paper at the 

Club?" interposes Jones. 

"It is dated at Chatham, my good man." says Brown. 
"A man if he is in London says he is in London. A man 
if he is in Rochester says he is in Rochester. Tliis man hap- 
pens to forget that he is' using the Club paper; and he liappens 
to be found out : many men doat happen to be found out. I've 
seen literary fellows at Clubs writing their rubbishing- articles ; 
I have no 'doubt they take away reams of paper. Tiicy crib 
thoughts: why shouldn't they crib stationery? One of your 
literary vagabonds who is capable of stabbing a reputation, 
who is capable of telling any monstrous falsehood to sui)port 
his party, is surely capable of stealing a ream of paper." 

"Well, well, we have all our weaknesses," sighs Robinson. 
" Seen that article, Thompson, in the Obseroor about Lord Clyde 
and the Club paper? You'll find it up stairs. In the llurd 
column of the fifth page towards the bottom of the page. I 
suppose he was so poor he couldn't aflbrd to buy a quu-e of 
paoer. Hadn't fouri)ence in the world. Oh, no! " 

^" And they want to get up a testimonial to this man's mem- 
ory—a statue or something! " cries Jawkins. "A man who 
wallows in wealth and takes paper away from his Club . I 
don't say he is not brave. Brutal courage most men have. 
1 don't say he was not a good officer: a man with such ex- 
perience must have been a good officer unless he was a bornlool. 



264 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

But to think of this man loaded with honors — though of a low 
origin — so lost to self-respect as actually to take away the 
' Athenseum ' paper ! These parvenus, sir, betray their origin — 
betray their origin. I said to my wife this very morning, ' Mrs. 
Jawkins,' I said, ' there is talk of a testimonial to this man. 
I will not give one shilling. I have no idea of raising statues 
to fellows who take away Club paper. No, by George, I have 
not. Why, the}^ will be raising statues to men who take Club 
spoons next ! Not one penny of my money shall they have ! ' " 

And now, if you please, we will tell the real story which 
has furnished this scandal to a newspaper, this tattle to Club 
gossips and loungers. The Field-Marshal, wishing to make 
a further provision for a friend, informed his lawyer what he 
desired to do. The lawj'er, a member of the "Athenaeum 
Club," there wrote the draft of such a codicil as he would ad- 
vise, and sent the paper by the post to Lord Clyde at Chatham. 
Lord Clj'de finding the paper perfectly satisfactory, signed it 
and sent it back : and hence we have the story of ' ' the codi- 
cil bearing the signature of Clyde, F. M., and written, strange 
to say, upon paper bearing the ' Athenseum Club' mark." 

Here I have been imagining a dialogue between a half-dozen 
gossips such as congregate round a Club fireplace of an after- 
noon. I wonder how many people besides — whether any 
chance reader of this very page has read and believed this 
story about the good old lord? Have the country papers 
copied the anecdote, and our "own correspondents" made 
their remarks on it? If, my good sir, or madam, j^ou have 
read it and credited it, don't you own to a little feeling of shame 
and sorrow, now that the trumpery little mystery is cleared? 
To " the new inhabitant of light," passed away and out of 
reach of our censure, misrepresentation, scandal, dulness, 
malice, a silly falsehood matters nothing. Censure and praise 
are ahke to him — 

" The music warbling to the deafened ear, 
The incense wasted on the funeral bier," 

the pompous eulogy pronounced over the gravestone, or the 
lie that slander spits on it. Faithfully though this brave old 
chief did his duty, honest and upright though his life was, 
glorious his renown — you see he could write at Chatham on 
London paper ; 3'ou see men can be found to point out how 
" strange" his behavior was. 

And about ourselves ? My good people, do you by chance 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 265 

know any man or woman who has formed unjust conckisions 
regarding his neighbor? Have you ever found yourself will- 
ing, na}', eager to believe evil of some man whom you hate? 
Whom 3'ou hate because he is successful, and you are not: 
because he is rich, and you are poor : because he dines with 
great men who don't invite 3'ou : because he wears a silk gown, 
and 3'ours is still stuff: because he has been called in to per- 
form the operation though you lived close by : because his 
pictures have been bought and yours returned home unsold : 
because he fills his church, and you are preaching to empty 
pews ? If 3'our rival prospers have 3'ou ever felt a twinge of 
anger? If his wife's carriage passes you and Mrs. Tomkins, 
who are in a cab, don't 3'ou feel that those people are giving 
themselves absurd airs of importance ? If he lives with great 
people, are 3^ou not sure he is a sneak? And if 3'ou ever felt 
env3' towards another, and if 3^our heart has ever been black 
towards your brother, if 3'ou have been jieevish at his success, 
pleased to hear his merit depreciated, and eager to believe 
all that is said in his disfavor — m3^ good sir, as 3'ou 3^ourself 
contritel3' own that 3'ou are unjust, jealous, uncharitable, so, 
3'OU may be sure, some men are uncharitable, jealous, and 
unjust regarding you. 

The proofs and manuscript of this little sermon have just 
come from the printer's, and as I look at the writing, I per- 
ceive, not without a smile, that one or two of the pages bear, 
" strange to sa3^" the mark of a Club of which I have the honor 
to be a member. Those lines quoted in a foregoing page are 
from some noble verses written bv one of Mr. Addison's men, 
Mr. Tickell, on the death of Cadogan, who was amongst the 
most prominent ' ' of Marlborough's captains and Eugenio's 
friends." If 3'Ou are acquainted with the histor3^ of those 
times, 3^ou have read how Cadogan had his feuds and hatreds 
too, as Tickell's patron had his, as Cadogan's great chief had 
his. "The Duke of Marlborough's character has been so 
varioush' drawn " (writes a famous contemporar3' of the duke's) , 
" that it is hard to pronounce on either side without the sus- 
picion of flattery or detraction. I shall say nothing of his mili- 
tary accomplishments, which the opposite reports of his friends 
and enemies among the soldiers have rendered problematical. 
Those maligners who deny him personal valor, seem not to 
consider that this accusation is charged at a venture, since the 
person of a general is too seldom exposed, and that fear which 
is said sometimes to have disconcerted him before action might 



266 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

probably be more for his army than himself." If Swift could 
hint a doubt of Marn3orough's courage, what wonder that a 
nameless scribe of our day should question the honor of 
Clyde? 



THE LAST SKETCH. 

Not many days since I went to visit a house v/here in 
former years I had received man}' a friendly welcome. We 
went into the owner's — an artist's — studio. Prints, pictures, 
and sketches hung on the walls as I had last seen and remem- 
bered them. The implements of the painter's art were there. 
The light which had shone upon so many, many hours of pa- 
tient and cheerful toil, poured through the northern window 
upon print and bust, lay figure and sketch, and upon the easel 
before which the good, the gentle, the beloved Leslie labored. 
In this room the busy brain had devised, and the skilful hand 
executed, I know not how man}' of the noble works which have 
delighted the world with their beauty and charming humor. 
Here the poet called up into pictorial presence, and informed 
with life, grace, beauty, infinite friendl}' mirth and wondrous 
naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books 
told him the stories, — his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his 
Moliere. his Le Sasre. There was his last work on the easel — 
a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet 
guileless fanc}' imagined the Mirlsnmmer NlgliCs queen to be. 
Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glim- 
m?r3 on the canvas. Fairy elves, no dcnibt, were to have been 
grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest 
Bottom's grotesque head and form are indicated as reposing by 
the side of the consummate beauty. The dai'kling forest would 
have grown around them, with the stars glittering from the 
midsummer sky : the flowers at the queen's feet, and the boughs 
and foliage about her, would have been peopled with gambolling 
sprites and fays. They w^cre dwelling in the artist's mind 
no doubt, and would have been developed by thai patient, 
faithful, admirable genius : but the busy brain stopped work- 
ing, the skilful hand fell lifeless, the loving, honest heart ceased 
to beat. What was she to have been — that fair Titania — 
when perfected by the patient skill of the poet, who in imagi- 
nation saw the sweet innocent figure, and with tender courtesy 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 267 

and caresses, as it were, posed and shaped and traced the fair 
form? Is there record kept anywhere of fancies conceived, 
bL^auoifuI, unborn? Some da}- will tlie}' assume form in some 
yet undeveloped light? If our bad unspoken thoughts are 
register'^d a;^uinst us, and are written in the awful account, 
will not the good thoughts unspoken, the love and tend.^rness, 
the pity, beauty, charity, which i)ass through the breast, and 
cause the heart to throb with silent good, find a remembranc-e 
too? A few wet?ks nioi'e, and tliis iovel^'ottlspring of the poet's 
concepticm would have been complete — to charm the workl witli 
its bcautliiil miith. May there not be some sphere unknown 
to us where it niay have an existence? They say our words, 
once out of our lips, go travelling in omne cevnm^ reverberating 
for ever and ever. If our words, why not our thoughts? if 
the Mas Been, why not the Might Have Been? 

Some day our spii'its may be permitted to walk in galleries 
of fancies more wondrous and beautit'id than any achieved 
works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and 
delight in masterpieces which poets' and artists' minds have 
fathered and conceived only. 

With a feeling much akin to that with which I looked upon 
the friend's — the admirable artist's — unfinished work, I can 
fancy many readers turning to the last pages which were traced 
by Chiirlottc Bronte's hand. Of the multitude tlurt have read 
her books, who has not known and deplored the tragedy of her 
family, her own most sad and untimely fate? Which of 
her readers has not become her friend? AVho that has known 
her books has not admired the artist's noble English, the burn- 
ing love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation 
at wi'ong, the eager S3mpathy, the pious love and reverence, 
the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman? What 
a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder 
on the gloomy northern moors ! At nine o'clock at night, Mrs. 
Gaskell tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and 
relative had gone to bed, the three poetesses — the three 
maidens, Charlotte, and Emily, and Anne — Charlotte being 
the '^ motherly friend and guardian to the other two" — " be- 
gan, like restless wild animals, to pace up and down their 
parlor, ' making out' their wonderful stories, talking over plans 
and projects, and thoughts of what was to be their futui-e life." 

One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte NichoUs sat 
with her husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the 
wind about the house, she suddenly said to her husband, " If 
you had not been with me, I must have been writing now." 



268 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

She then ran up stau's, and brought down, and read aloud, the 
beginning of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband 
remarked, "The critics will accuse you of repetition." She 
replied, " Oh ! I shall alter that. I alwaj's begin two or three 
times before I can please m3'self." But it was not to be. The 
trembling little hand was to write no more. The heart newl}^ 
awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal 
hope, was soon to cease to beat ; that intrepid outspeaker and 
champion of truth, that eager, impetuous redresser of wrong, 
was to be called out of the world's fight and struggle, to lay 
down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere where 
even a noble indignation cor ulterius nequit lacerare, and where 
truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage 
war. 

I can onl}' sa}" of this lady, vidi tantum. I saw her first just 
as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to 
recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, 
the great honest eyes. An impetuous honest}^ seemed to me to 
characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task 
for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Field- 
ing we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She 
jumped too rapidl}^ to conclusions. (I have smiled at one 
or two passages in the " Biography', " in which mj' own dispo- 
sition or behavior forms the subject of talk.) She formed 
conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories 
of character upon them. New to the London world, she 
entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own ; 
and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arro- 
gance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. 
She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversa- 
tion fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging 
the London folk prematurel}' : but perhaps the city is rather 
angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc 
marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy 
morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and 
lofty, and high-minded person. A great and hol}^ reverence 
of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our 
brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that 
life so noble, so lonel}' — of that passion for truth — of those 
nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, 
depression, elation, prayer ; as one reads the necessarily in- 
complete, though most touching and admirable history- of the 
heart that throbbed in this one little frame — of this one 
amongst the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 269 

gi-eat earth — this great earth ? — this little speck in the infinite 
universe of God, — with what wonder do we think of to-da}^ 
with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but 
darkly seen shall be clear ! As I read this little fragmentary 
sketch, I think of the rest. Is it? And where is it? Will 
not the leaf be turned some da}', and the story be told ? Shall 
the deviser of the tale somewhere perfect the histor}' of little 
Emma's griefs and troubles? Shall Titania come forth com- 
plete with her sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the 
forest around her, and all the stars of summer glittering over- 
head ? 

How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure 
with which I read "Jane Eyre," sent to me b}- an author whose 
name and sex were then alike unknown to me ; the strange 
fascinations of the book ; and how with m}" own work pressing 
upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them 
down until they were read through ! Hundreds of those who, 
like myself, recognized and admired that master-work of 
a great genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard 
and curiosity upon the last fragmentary sketch from the noble 
hand which wrote " Jane Eyre." 



THE 

SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON^ 

By MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSh! 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



I. 

ON THE DISINTERMENT OF NAPOLEON AT 

ST. HELENA. 

My Dear , — It is no easy task in this world to distin- 
guish between what is great in it, and what is mean ; and man^' 
and man}^ is the puzzle that I have had in reading Histor}' (or 
the works of fiction which go by that name) , to know whether I 
should laud up to the skies, and endeavor, to the best of m}^ small 
capabilities, to imitate the remarkable character about whom 1 
was reading, or whether I should fling aside the book and the 
hero of it, as things altogether base, unworth}', laughable, and 
get a novel, or a game of billiards, or a pipe of tobacco, or the 
report of the last debate in the House, or an}' other emploj'ment 
which would leave the mind in a state of easy vacuity, rather 
than pester it with a vain set of dates relating to actions which 
are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a parcel of names 
of people whom it can do one no earthly good to remember. 

It is more than probable, my love, that you are acquainted 
with what is called Grecian and Roman history, chiefly from 
perusing, in very earl}^ youth, the little sheepskin-bound volumes 
of the ingenious Dr. Goldsmith, and have been indebted for 
your knowledge of the English annals to a subsequent study of 
the more voluminous works of Hume and Smollett. The first 
and the last-named authors, dear Miss Smith, have written 
each an admirable histor}^, — that of the Reverend Dr. Prim- 
rose, Vicar of WakefieldJ^ and that of Mr. Robert Bramble, of 
Bramble Hall — in both of which works you will find true and 
instructive pictures of human life, and which you may always 
think over with advantage. But let me caution you against 
putting any considerable trust in the other works of these 
authors, wliich were placed in your hands at school and after- 

18 



274 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

wards, and in which j^ou were taught to believe. Modern 
historians, for the most part, know very little, and, secondly-, 
onl}' tell a little of what the3' know. 

As for those Greeks and Romans whom 3'ou have read of in 
"sheepskin," were 3'ou to know really what those monsters 
were, j^ou would blush all over as red as a hollyhock, and put 
down the histor3'-book in a fury. Manj^ of our English worthies 
are no better. You are not in a situation to know the real 
characters of any one of them. They ai)pear before 3'ou in 
their public capacities, but the individuals you know not. Sup- 
pose, for instance, your mamma had purchased her tea in the 
Borough from a grocer living there by the name of Greenacre : 
suppose 3'ou had been asked out to dinner, and the gentleman 
of the house had said : " Ho ! Francois ! a glass of champagne 
for Miss Smith ; " — Courvoisier would have served you just as 
anj' other footman would ; you would never have known that 
there was anything extraordinarj- in these individuals, but would 
have thought of them onl^' in their respective public characters 
of Grocer and Footman. This, Madam, is Histor}', in which a 
man always appears dealing with the world in his apron, or his 
laced livery, but which has not the power or the leisure, or, 
perhaps, is too high and might}^ to condescend to follow and 
stud^' him in his privacy. Ah, my dear, when big and little 
men come to be measured rightly, and great and small actions 
to be weighed properly, and people to be stripped of their royal 
robes, beggars' rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbo\ved 
coats, and the like — or the contraiy sav, when souls come to 
be stripped of their wicked deceiving bodies, and turned out 
stark naked as they were before they wei'e born — what a 
strange startling sight shall we see, and wliat a pretty figure 
sliall some of us cut! P'ancy how we shall see Pride, with his 
Stultz clothes and padding i)nlled off, and dwindled down to a 
forked radish ! Fancv some Angelic Virtue, whose white lai- 
ment is suddenly whisked over his head, showing us cloven 
feet and a tail! Fancv Humility, cased of its sad load of cares 
and wnnt and scorn, walking up to the very highest place of 
all, and blushino- as he takes it! Fancv, — but we must not 
fancy such a scene at all, which w^ould be an outrage on public 
decency. Should we be any better than our neighbors i' No, 
certainly. And as we can't be virtuous, let us be decent. Fig- 
leaves are a ^'ery decent, becoming wear, and have been now 
in fashion for four tliousand years. And so, my dear, Historj' 
is written on lig-leaves. AVoukl you have anything further? 
lie ! -. " 




r^^' 






M. Gdizot. 



OF NAPOLEON. 275 

Yes, four thousand years ago that famous tree was planted. 
At tlieir ver}' first lie, our first parents made for it, and there 
it is still the great Humbug Plant, stretching its wide arras, 
and sheltering beneath its lea\es, as broad and green as ever, 
all the generations of men. Thus, ni}- dear, coquettes of your 
fascinating sex cover their persons with figgery, fantastically 
arranged, and call tlieir masquerading, modesty. Cowards fig 
themselves out fiercely as '' salvage men," and make us believe 
that they are warriors. Fools look very solemnly out from the 
dusk of the leaves, and we fanc}- in the gloom that they are 
sages. And many a man sets a great wreath about his pate 
and struts abroad a hero, Avhose claims we would all of us laugh 
at, could we but remove the ornament and see his numskull bare. 

And such — (excuse m}' sermonizing) — such is the constitu- 
tion of mankind, that men have, as it were, entered into a com- 
pact among themselves to pursue the fig-leaf system a I'outrunce, 
and to cry down all who oppose it. Humbug they will have. 
Humbugs themselves, they will respect humbugs. Their daily 
victuals of life must be seasoned with humbug. Certain things 
are there in the world that they will not allow to be called bj' 
their right names, and will insist upon our admiring, whether 
we will or no. Woe be to the man who would enter too far 
into the recesses of that magnificent temple where our Goddess 
is enshrined, peep through the vast embroidered curtains indis- 
creetl}*, penetrate the secret of secrets, and expose the Gam- 
mon of Gammons ! And as you must not peer too curiously 
within, so neither must 3'ou remain scornfully without. Hum- 
bug-worshippers, let us come into our great temple regulai'ly 
and decentlv : take our seats, and settle our clothes decentlv ; 
open our books, and go through the service with decent gravity ; 
listen, and be decently affected by the expositions of the decent 
priest of the place ; and if by chance some straggling vagabond, 
loitering in the sunshine out of doors, dares to laugh or to sing, 
and disturb the sanctified dulness of the faithful ; — quick! a 
couple of big beadles rush out and belabor the wretch, and his 
yells make our devotions more comfortable. 

Some magnificent religious ceremonies of this nature are at 
present taking place in France ; and thinking that you might 
perhaps while away some long winter evening with an account 
of them, I have compiled the following pages for your use. 
Newspapers have been filled, for some days past, with details 
regarding the St. Helena expedition, many pamphlets have 
been published, men go about crying little books and broad- 
sheets filled with real or sham particulars; and from these 



il 



276 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

scarce arid valuable documents the following pages are chiefly 
compiled. 

We must begin at the beginning ; premising, in the first 
place, that Monsieur Guizot, when French Ambassador at 
London, waited upon Lord Palmerston with a request that the 
body of the Emperor Napoleon should be given up to the French 
nation, in order that it might find a final resting-place in French 
earth. To this demand the English Government gave a ready 
assent ; nor was there any particular explosion . of sentiment 
upon either side, onl}' some pretty cordial expressions of mutual 
good-wiU. Orders were sent out to St. Helena that the corpse 
should be disinterred in due time, when the French expedition 
had arrived in search of it, and that every respect and attention 
should be paid to those who came to carry back to their country 
the body of the famous dead warrior and sovereign. 

This matter being arranged in verj^ few words (as in Eng- 
land, upon most points, is the laudable fashion), the French 
Chambers began to debate about the place in which they should 
bury the body when they got it; and numberless pamphlets 
and newspapers out of doors joined in the talk. Some people 
there were who had fought and conquered and been beaten with 
the great Napoleon, and loved him and his memory. Many 
more were there who, because of his great genius and valor, 
felt excessively proud in their own particular persons, and 
clamored for the return of their hero. And if there were some 
few individuals in this great hot-headed, gallant, boasting, 
subUme, absurd French nation, who had taken a cool view of 
the dead Emperor's character ; if, perhaps, such men as Louis 
Philippe, and Monsieur A. Thiers, Minister and Deputy, and 
Monsieur Fran9ois Guizot, Deputy and Excellency, had^ from 
interest or conviction, opinions at all diff'oi'ing from those of 
the majority ; why, they knew what was what, and kept their 
opinions to themselves, coming with a tolerably good grace and 
flinging a few handfuls of incense upon the altar of the popular 
idol. 

In the succeeding debates, then, various opinions were given 
with regard to the place to be selected for the Emperor's sepul- 
ture. " Some demanded," says an eloquent anonymous Captain 
in the Navy who has written an " Itinerary from Toulon to St. 
Helena," " that the coffin should be deposited under the bronze 
taken from the enemy by the French army — under the Column 
of the Place Vendome. The idea was a fine one. This is the 
most glorious monument that was ever raised in a conqueror's 
honor. This column has been melted out of foreign cannon. 



OF NAPOLEON. 277 

These same cannons have furrowed the bosoms of our braves 
with noble -cicatrices ; and this metal — conquered by the soldier 
first, b}^ the artist afterwards — has allowed to be imprinted on 
its front its own defeat and our glorj'. Napoleon might sleep 
in peace under this audacious trophy. But, would his ashes 
find a shelter sufficientl}' vast beneath this pedestal? And his 
puissant statue dominating* Paris, beams with sufTicient grandeur 
on this place : whereas the wheels of carriages and the feet of 
passengers would profane the funereal sanctity of the spot in 
trampling on the soil so near his head." 

You must not take this description, dearest Amelia, "at 
the foot of the letter," as the French phrase it, but 3'ou will 
here have a master^ exposition of the arguments for and against 
the burial of the Emperor under the Column of the Place Ven- 
dome. The idea was a fine one, granted ; but, like all other 
ideas, it was open to objections. You must not fanc}' that the 
cannon, or rather the cannon-balls, were in the habit of furrow- 
ing the bosoms of F'rench braves, or an^^ other braves, with 
cicatrices : on the contrary, it is a known fact that cannon-balls 
make wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds 
partially healed) ; na}^, that a man generally dies after receiving 
one such projectile on his chest, much more after having his 
bosom furrowed by a score of them. No, ni}^ love ; no bosom, 
however heroic, can stand such applications, and the author 
only means that the French soldiers faced the cannon and took 
them. Nor, my love, must you suppose that the column was 
melted : it was the cannon was melted, not the column ; but 
such phrases are often used by orators when they wish to give 
a particular force and emphasis to their opinions. 

Well, again, although Napoleon might have slept in peace 
under "this audacious trophy," hoAV could he do so and car- 
riages go rattling by all night," and people with great iron heels 
to their boots pass clattering over the stones? Nor indeed 
could it be expected that a man whose reputation stretches 
from the Pyramids to the Kremlin, should find a column of 
which the base is only five-and-twenty feet square, a shelter 
vast enough for his bones. In a word, then, although the pro- 
posal to bury Napoleon under the column was ingenious, it was 
found not to suit; whereupon somebody else proposed the 

Madelaine. 

"It was proposed," says the before-quoted author with 
his usual felicity, "to consecrate the Madelaine to his exiled 
manes " — that is, to his bones when they were not in exile any 
longer. "He ought to have, it was said, a temple entire. 



278 



THE SECOND FUNERAL 



H 






lorv fills the 



id. His boi 



could not contain tliem- 
solves in the coffin of a man — in tlie tomb of a king!" In 
this case what was Mary Magdalen to do? '"This proposition, 
I am happ3' to say, was rejected, and a new one — that of the 
President of the Council — adopted. Napoleon and his braves 
onght not to quit each other. Under the immense gilded dome 
of the Invalides he wonhl find a saittttnars' wortliy of himself. 
A dome imitates the vault of heaven, and that vault alone" 
(meaning of course the other vault) ''should dominate above 
his head. His old mutilated Guard shall watch around him : 
the last veteran, as he has shed his blood in his combats, shall 
breathe his last sioh near his tomb, and all these tombs shall 
sleep under the tattered standards that have been won from all 
the nations of Europe." 

The orio^inal words are " sous les lambeaux cribles des 
drapeaux cneillis chez toutes les nations ; " in English, " under 
the riddled rags of the flags that have been culled or plucked " 
(like roses or buttercups) ''in all the nations." Sweet, inno- 
cent flowers of victory ! there the3' are, my dear, sure enough, 
and a prett}' considerable hortns siccus may any man examine 
who chooses to walk to the Invalides. The burial-place being 
thus agreed on, the expedition was prepared, and on the 7tli 
July the " Belle Poule " frigate, in company with " La F'avorite " 
corvette, quitted Toulon harbor. A couple of steamers, the 
"Trident" and the "Ocean," escorted the ships as far as 
Gibraltar, and there left them to pursue their voj-age. 

The two ships quitted the harbor in the sight of a vast con- 
course of people, and in the midst of a great roaring of cannons. 
Previous to the departure of the " Belle Poule," the Bishoj) of 
Frejus went on board, and gave to the cenotaph, in which the 
Emperor's remains were to be deposited, his episcopal benedic- 
tion. Napoleon's old friends and followers, the two Bertrands, 
Gourgaud, Emanuel Las Cases, " companions in exile, or sons 
of the companions in exile of the prisoner of the infame Hud- 
son," sa^s a French writer, were passengers on board the 
frigate. Marchand, Dsnis, Pierret, Novaret, his old and faith- 
ful servants, were likewise in the vessel. It was commanded 
by his Royal Highness Fi-ancis Ferdinand Philip Louis* Marie 
d'Orleans, Prince de Joinville, a young prince two-and-twenty 
years of age, who was already distinguished in the service of 
his countrv and kinij. 

On the 8th of October, after a voyage of six-and-sixty days, 
the "Belle Poule" arrived in James Town haibor; and on its 
arrival, as on its departure from France, a great filing of guns 




DOME DES JNVALFDES. 



I 



a 



» 



OF NAPOLEON. 279 

took place. First, the " Oreste " French brig-of-war began 
roaring out a sahitation to the frigate; then the "Dolphin" 
English schooner gave her one-and-twenty guns ; then the 
frigate returned the compliment of the "Dolphin" schooner; 
then she blazed out with one-and-twent}' guns more, as a mark 
of particular politeness to the shore — which kindness the forts 
acknowledged by similar detonations. 

These little compliments concluded on both sides, Lieutenant 
Middlemore, son and aide-de-camp of tlie Governor of St. 
Helena, came on board the French frigate, and brought his 
father's best respects to his Royal Highness. The Governor 
was at home ill, and forced to keep his room ; but he had made 
his house at James Town ready for Captain Joinville and his 
suite, and begged that they would make use of it during their 
sta}'. 

On the 9th, H. R. H. the Prince of Joinville put on his full 
uniform and landed, in company with Generals Bertrand and 
Gourgaud, Baron Las Cases, M. Marchand, M. Coquereau, 
the chaplain of the expedition, and M. de Rohan Chabot, who 
acted as chief mourner. All the garrison were under arms to 
receive the illustrious Prince and the other members of the 
expedition — who forthwith repaired to Plantation House, and 
had a conference with the Governor regarding their mission. 

On the 10th, 11th, 12th, these conferences continued: the 
crews of the French ships wei'e permitted to come on shore and 
see the tomb of Napoleon. Bertrand, Gourgaud, Las Cases 
wandered about the island and revisited the spots to which they 
had been partial in the lifetime of the Emperor. 

The loth October was fixed on for the day of the exhuma- 
tion : that day five-and twenty years, the ILmperor Napoleon 
first set his foot^ipon the island. 

On the day previous all things had been made ready: the 
grand coffins and ornaments brought from France, and the 
articles necessary for the operation were carried to the valley 
of the Tomb. 

Tlie operations commenced at midnight. The well-known 
fiiends of Nai)oleo!i before named and some other attendants 
of his, the chaplain and his acolytes, the doctor of the " Belle 
Poule," the captains of the I'rench ships, and Captain Alex- 
ander of the Engineers, the Enolish Commissioner, attended 
the disinterment. His Roval Highness Prince de Joinville 
could not be present because the workmen were under English 
command. 

The men worked for nine hours incessantlj- , when at length 



280 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

the earth was entirely removed from the vault, all the horizontal 
strata of masonrj^ demolished, and the large slab which covered 
the place where the stone sarcophagus la}^ removed by a crane. 
This outer coffin of stone was perfect, and could scarcely be 
said to be damp. 

" As soon as the Abbe Coquereau had recited the prayers, 
the coffin was removed with the greatest care, and carried by 
the engineer- soldiers, bareheaded, into a tent that had been 
prepared for the purpose. After the religious ceremonies, the 
inner coffins were opened. The outermost coffin was slightl}^ 
injured: then came one of lead, which was in good condition, 
and enclosed two others — one of tin and one of wood. The 
last coffin was lined inside with white satin, which, having 
become detached by the effect of time, had fallen upon the 
body and enveloped it like a winding-sheet, and had become 
slightl}' attached to it. 

"It is difficult to describe with what anxiety and emotion 
those who were present waited for the moment which was to 
expose to them all that death had left of Nr.poleon. Not- 
withstanding the singular state of preservation of the tomb and 
coffins, we could scarcely hope to find anything but some mis- 
shapen remains of the least perishable part of the costume to 
evidence the identity of the body. But when Doctor Guillard 
raised the sheet of satin, an indescribable feeling of surprise 
and affection was expressed bj' the spectators, man}' of whom 
burst into tears. The Emperor was himself before their eyes I 
The features of the face, though changed, were perfectly recog- 
nized ; the hands extremel}' beautiful ; his well-known costume 
had suffered but little, and the colors were easil}^ distinguished. 
The attitude itself was full of ease, and but for the fragments 
of the satin lining which covered, as with a fine gauze, several 
parts of the uniform, we might have' believed we still saw 
Napoleon before us lying on his bed of state. General Ber- 
trand and M. Marchand, who were both present at the inter- 
ment, quickly pointed out the different articles which each had 
deposited in the coffin, and remained in the precise position in 
which the}' had previously described them to be. 

" The two inner coffins were carefulh' closed again ; the old 
leaden coffin was strongl}' blocked up with wedges of wood, 
and both were once more soldered up with the most minute 
precautions, under the direction of Dr. Guillard. These dif- 
ferent operations being terminated, the ebon}" sarcophagus was 
closed as well as its oak case. On delivering the key of the 
ebony sarcophagus to Count de Chabot, the King's Com- 



OF NAPOLEON. 281 

misoioner, Captain Alexander declared to him, in the name of 
the Governor, that this coffin, containing the mortal remains 
of th-o Emperor Napoleon, was considered as at the disposal of 
the French Government from that day, and from the moment 
at vrhich it should arrive at the place of embarkation, towards 
which it was about to be sent under the orders of General 
Middlemore. The King's Commissioner replied that he was 
charged by his Government, and in its name, to accept the 
coffin from the hands of the British authorities, and tiiat he 
and the other persons composing the French mission were ready 
to follow it to James Town, w4iere the Prince de Joinville, 
superior commandant of the expedition, would be read3' to 
receive it and conduct it on board his frigate. A car drawn 
b\' four horses, decked with funereal emblems, had been pre- 
pared before the arrival of the expedition, to receive the coffin, 
as well as a pall, and all the other suitable trappings of mourn- 
ing. When the sarcophagus was placed on the car, the whole 
was covered with a magnificent imperial mantle brought from 
Paris, the four corners of which were borne bv Generals Ber- 
trand and Gourgaud, Baron Las Cases and M. Marchand. At 
half-past three o'clock the funeral car began to move, preceded 
by a chorister bearing the cross, and b}- the Abbe Coquereau. 
M. de Chabot acted as chief mourner. All the authorities of 
the island, all the principal inhabitants, and the whole of the 
garrison, followed in procession from the tomb to the quay. 
But with the exception of the artilleiymen necessary to lead 
the horses, and occasionallj' support the car when descending 
some steep parts of the wa)', the places nearest the coffin 
were reserved for the French mission. General Middlemore, 
although in a weak state of health, persisted in following the 
whole wa}' on foot, together with General Churchill, chief of 
the staff in India, who had arrived only two days before from 
Bombav. The immense weiaiht of the coffins, and the uneven- 
ness of the road, rendered the utmost carefulness necessary 
throuo-hout the whole distance. Colonel Trelawnev conmianded 
in person the small detachment of artillerymen who conducted 
the car, and, thanks to his great care, not the slightest accident 
took place. From the moment of departure to the arrival at 
the qua}^, the cannons of the forts and the ' Belle Poule ' (ired 
minute-guns. After an hour's march the rain ceased for the 
first time since the commencement of the operations, and on 
arriving in sight of the town we found a brilliant sky and 
beautiful weather. From the morning the three French vessels 
of war had assumed the usual signs of deep mournhig : their 



282 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

3'ards crossed and their flags lowered. Two French merchant- 
men, ' Bonne Amie' and ' Indien,' which had been in the roads 
for two da^s, had put themselves under the Prince's orders, and 
followed durins: the cerem^onv all the manoeuvres of the ' Belle 
Poule/ The forts of the town, and the houses of the consuls, 
had also their flasfs half-mast hioh. 

" On arriving at the entrance of the town, the troops of the 
garrison and the militia formed in two lines as far as the ex- 
tremity of the quay. According to the order for mourning 
prescribed for the English army, the men had their arms reversed 
and the officers had crape on their arms, wnth their swords 
reversed. All the inhabitants had been kept away from the 
line of march, but they lined the terraces commanding: the 
town, and the streets were occupied only by the troops, the 91st 
Regiment being on tlie right and the militia on the left. The 
cortege advanced slowly between two ranks of soldiers to the 
sound of a funeral marcli, while the cannons of the forts were 
fired, as well as those of the ' Belle Poule' and the ' Dolphin ; ' 
the echoes being repeated a thousand times by the rocks above 
James Town. After two hours' march the cortege stopped at 
the end of the quay, where the Prince de Joinville had stationed 
himself at the head of the officers of the three French ships of 
war. The greatest official honors had been rendered b}- the 
English authorities to the memory of the Emperor — the most 
striking testimonials of respect had marked the adieu given 
by St. Helena to his coffin ; and from this moment the mortal 
remains of the Emperor were about to belong to France. When 
the funeral-car stopped, the Prince de Joinville advanced alone, 
and in presence of all around, who stood with their heads un- 
covered, received, in a solemn manner, the imperial coffin from 
the hands of General Middlemore. His Roval Highness then 
thanked the Governor, in the name of France, for all the testi- 
monials of sympathy and respect wnth which the authorities and 
inhabitants of St. Helena had surrounded the memorable cere- 
monial. A cutter had been expressly prepared to receive the 
coffin. Durino- the embarkation, which the Prince directed him- 
self, the bands played funeral airs, and all the boats were 
stationed I'ound with their oars shipped. The moment the 
sarcophagus touched the cutter, a magnificent royal flag, which 
the ladies of James Town had embroidered for the occasion, 
wa3 unfurled, and the 'Belle Poule ' immediately squared her 
masts and unfurled her colors. All the manoeuvres of the frigate 
were immediately followed by the other vessels. Our mourning 
had ceased with the exile of Napoleon, and the French naval 



OF NAPOLEON. 283 

division dressed itself out in all its festal ornaments to receive 
the imperial coffin under the French flag. The sarcophao-ns 
was covered in the cutter with the imperial mantle. The 
Prince de Joinville jjlaced himself at the rudder, Commandant 
Guyet at the head of the boat ; Generals Bertrand and Gour- 
gaud, Baron Las Cases, M. Marchand, and the Abbe Coqncroaii 
occupied the same places as during the march. Count Chabot 
and Commandant Hernoux were astern, a little in advance of 
the Prince. As soon as the cutter had pushed off from the 
quay, the batteries ashore fired a salute of twenty-one o-ims, 
and our ships returned the salute with all their artillcrv. Two 
other salutes were fired during the passage from the*^ quav to 
the frigate ; the cutter advancing vejy slowly, and surrounded 
by the other boats. At half-past six o'clock it reached the 
' Belle Poule,' all the men being on the yards with their hats in 
their hands. The Prince had had arranged on the deck a 
chapel, decked with flags and trophies of arms, the altar being 
23laced at the foot of the mizzen-mast. The coffin, carried by 
our sailors, passed between two ranks of officers with drnwn 
swords, and was placed on the quartei'-deck. The absolution 
was pronounced by the Abbe Coquereau the same evening. 
Next day, at ten o'clock, a solemn mass was celebrated on the 
deck, in presence of the officers and part of the crews of the 
ships. His Royal Highness stood at the foot of (he coffin. 
The cannon of the 'Favorite' and 'Oreste' flred minute-guns 
during this ceremony, which terminated by a solemn absolution ; 
and the Prince de Joinville, the gentlemen of the mission, the 
officers, and the premiers matlrcs of the ship, sprinkled holy 
water on the coffin. At eleven, all the ceremonies of the church 
were accomplished, all tiie honors done to a sovereign had been 
p:iiil to th3 mortnl remains of Napoleon. The coffin was carc- 
I'nlly lowered b3tween d3cks, and placed in the ch>ipe!le (irdcnfc 
which had been prepai'ed at Toulon for its reception. At this 
moment, tlie vessels fired a last salute witii all their artillery, 
and the frigate took in her flags, keeping up only her flag at 
the stern and the royal standard at the maintopgallant-mast. 
On Sunday, the 18th, at eight in the morning, the ' Belle Poule' 
quitted St. Helena with her precious deposit on board. 

" During the whole time that the mission remained at James 
Town, the best understanding never ceased to exist between 
the population of the island and the French. The Prince de 
Joinville and his companions met in all quarters and at all 
times with the "I'eatest o'oorl-will and the warmest testimonials 
of f-ympathy. The authorities and the inhabitants must have 



2S-i 



^HE SECOND FUXERAL 



felt, 110 doubt, great regret at seeing taken away from their 
island tho coffin that had rendered it so celebrated ; but thev 
repressed their feelings with a courtes}' that does honor to tlie 
frankness of their character." 



II. 



ON THE VOYAGE FROM ST. HELENA TO PAPJS. 



On the 18th October the French frigate quitted the island 
with its precious burden on board. 

His Royal Highness the Captain acknowledged cordially the 
kindness and attention which he and his crew had received from 
the Enoflish authorities and the inhabitants of the Island of St. 
Helena ; na}', promised a pension to an old soldier who had 
been for many years the guardian of the imperial tomb, and 
went so far as to take into consideration the petition of a certain 
lodging-house iceeper, who prayed for a compensation for the 
loss which the removal of the P^mperor's body would occasion 
to her. And although it was not to be expected that the great 
French nation should forego its natural desire of recovering the 
remains of a hero so dear to it for the sake of the individual in- 
terest of the landlady in question, it must have been satisfactory 
to her to find that the peculiarit}- of her position was so deli- 
cately appreciated by the august Prince who commanded the 
expedition, and carried away with him anlmce dimidinm siice — 
the half of the genteel independence which she derived from the 
situation of her hotel. In a word, pohteness and friendship could 
not be carried farther. The Prince's realm and the landlady's 
were bound tooether by the closest ties of amitv. M. Thiers 
was Minister of France, the great patron of the English alliance. 
At London M. Guizot was the worthy representative of the 
French good- will towards the British people ; and the remark 
frequently made by our orators at public dinners, that " France 
and England, while united, might defy the world," was con- 
sidered as likely to hold good for many years to come, — the 
union that is. As for defying the world, that was neilher here 
nor there ; nor did English politicians ever dream of doing any 
such thing, except perhaps at the tenth glass of port at " Free- 
mason's Tavern." 










/ ■ 



'1 1 . 



\X4^N V 






M. Thiers. 



OF NAPOLEON. 285 

Little, however, did Mrs. Corbett, the St. Helena land- 
lady, little did his Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand Philip 
Marie de Joinville know what was going on in Europe all this 
time (when I say in Europe, I mean in Turkey, Syria, and 
Egypt) ; how clouds, in fact, were gathering upon wliat you call 
the political horizon ; and how tempests were rising that were 
to blow to pieces our Anglo-Gallic temple of friendship. Oh, 
but it is sad to think that a single wicked old Turk should be 
the means of setting our two Christian na,tions by the ears ! 

Yes, my love, this disreputable old man had been for some 
time past the object of the disinterested attention of the great 
soveieigns of Europe. The Elmperor Nicolas (a moral char- 
acter, though following the Greek superstition, and adored for 
his mildness and benevolence of disposition), the Emperor 
Ferdinand, the King of Prussia, and our own gi-acious Queen, 
had taken such just offence at his conduct and disobedioice 
towards a young and interesting sovereign, whose authority he 
Ifad disregarded, whose fleet he had kidnapped, whose fair prov- 
inces he had pounced upon, that the^^ determined to come to the 
aid of Abdul Medjid the First, Emperor of the Turks, and bring 
his rebellious vassal to reason. In this project the French 
nation was invited to join ; but the}- refused the invitation, say- 
ing, that it was necessaiy for the maintenance of the balance of 
power in Europe that his Highness Mehemet Ali should keep 
possession of what by hook or by crook he had gotten, and that 
they would have no hand in injuring him. But why continue 
this argument, which you have read in the newspapers for man}^ 
months past? You, ray dear, must know as well as I, that the 
balance of power in Europe could not possibly* be maintained in 
any such way ; and though, to be sure, for the last fifteen years, 
the progress of the old robber has not made much difference 
to us in the neighborhood of Russell Square, and the battle of 
Nezib did not in the least affect our taxes, our homes, our in- 
stitutions, or the price of butcher's meat, yet there is no know- 
ing what might have happened had Mehemet Ali been allowed 
to remain quietly as he was : and the balance of power in P^ii- 
rope might have been — the deuce knows where. 

Here, then, in a nutshell, 3'ou have the whole matter in dis- 
pute. While I^^Irs. Corbett and the Prince de Joinville were 
innocenth- interchanging compliments at vSt. Helena, — bang ! 
bang ! Commodore Napier was pouring broadsides into Tyre 
and Sidon ; our gallant navy was storming breaches and rout- 
ing armies ; Colonel Hodges had seized upon the green standard 
of Ibrahim Pacha; and the poivder-inagazinc of St. John of 



236 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

Acre was blown up sky-high, with eighteen hundred Egyptian 
soldiers in company- witli it. The French said that ror Anf/hu's 
had achieved all these successes, and no doubt believed that the 
poor fellows at Acre were bribed to a man. 

It must have been particularl3' unpleasant to a high-minded 
nation like the French — at the very moment when the Egyp- 
tian affair and the balance of Europe had been settled in this 
abrupt wa}' — to find out all of a sudden that the Pasha of 
Egypt was their dearest friend and ally. The}' had suffered in 
the person of their friend ; and thougli, seeing that the dispute 
was ended, and the territor}' out of his hand, the}- could not 
hope to get it back for him, or to aid him in any substantial 
way, yet Monsieur Thiers determined, just as a mark of polite- 
ness to" the Pasha, to fight all P^urope for maltreating him, — 
all Europe, England included. He was bent on war, and an 
immense majority of the nation went with him. He called for 
a million of soldiers, and would have had them too, had not the 
King been against the project and delayed the completion of it 
at least for a time. 

Of these great European disputes Captain Joinville received 
a notification while he was at sea on board his fri2;ate : as we 
find b}' the official account which has been published of his 
mission. 

" Some daj-s after quitting St. Helena," sa3's that docu- 
ment, " the expedition fell in with a ship coming from Europe, 
and v/as thus made acquainted with the warlike rumors then 
afloat, by which a collision with the English marine was ren- 
dered possible. The Prince de Joinville immediatelj' assembled 
the officers of the ' Belle Poule,' to deliberate on an event so 
unexpected and important. 

" The council of war having expressed its opinion that it 
was necessary at all events to prepare for an energetic defence, 
preparations were made to place in battery all the guns that the 
frigate could brins; to bear ao^ainst the enemv. The provisional 
cabins that had been fitted up in the battery were demolished, 
the partitions removed, and, with all the elegant furniture of 
the cabins, flnns; into the sea. The Prince de Joinville was the 
first ' to execute himself,' and the frigate soon found itself 
armed with six or eight more guns. 

'' That part of the ship where these cabins had previously 
bepn, went by the name of Lacedcemon ; everything luxurious 
bemsr banished to make wav for what was useful. 

'' Indeed, all persons who were on board agree in sayuig 
that Monseigneur the Prince de Joinville most worthily* acquitted 



OF NAPOLEON. 287 

himself of the great and honorable mission which had been con- 
fided to him. All affirm not onW that the commandant of 
the expedition did everything at St. Helena which as a French- 
man he was bound to do in order that the remains of the Em- 
peror should receive all the honors due to them, but moreover 
that he accomplished his mission w^ith all the measured solem- 
nity, all the pious and severe dignity, that the son of the 
Emperor 'ximself would have shown upon a like occasion. 
The commandant had also comprehended that the remains of 
the Emperor must never fall into the hands of the stranger, and 
being himself decided rather to sink his ship than to give up his 
precious deposit, he had inspired every one about him with the 
same energetic resolution that he had himself taken ' agai}ist an 
extreme eveniuality .^ " 

Monseioneur, my dear, is reallv one of the finest vouno- fel- 
lows it is possible to see. A tall, broad-chested, slim-waisted, 
brown-faced, dark-eyed 3'oung prince, with a great beard (and 
other martial (jualities no doubt) beyond his years. As he 
strode into the Chapel of the Invalides on Tuesday at the head 
of his men, he made no small impression, I can tell you, upon 
the ladies assembled to witness the ceremonv. Nor are the 
crew of the " Belle Poule" less agreeable to look at than their 
commander. A more clean, smart, active, well-limbed set of 
lads never "did dance" upon the deck of the famed " Belle 
Poule '' in the days of her memorable combat with the " Saucy 
Arethusa." " These five hundred sailors," says a French news- 
paper, speaking of them in the proper French way, " sword in 
hand, in the severe costume of board-ship (la shrrc teniie du 
bord), seemed proud of the mission that the>- had just accom- 
plished. Their blue jackets, their red cravats, the turned-down 
collars of blue shirts edged with white, nbore all tiieir resolute 
appearance and martial air, gave a favorable specimen of the 
present ntate of our marine — a marine of which so much might 
be crrpeeted and from which so little has been required." — Le 
Commerce : IGth December. 

There the^' were, sure enough ; a cutlass upon one hip, a 
pistol on the other — a gallant set of young men indeed. I 
doubt, to be sure, whether the severe tenue dn, bord requires that 
the seaman should be always furnished with those ferocious 
weapons, which in sundry maritime manoeuvres, such as going 
to sleep in your hammock for instance, or twinkling a binnacle, 
or lulling a marlinspike, or keelhauling a maintopgallant (all 
naval operations, my dear, which any seafaring novelist will ex- 
plain to you) — I doubt, I say, whether these weapcus are always 



288 



THE SECOND FUNERAL 



worn Iw sailors, and have heard that they are commonly and 
very sensibly t«o, locked up until they are wanted. Take 
another example : suppose artillerymen were incessantly com- 
pelled to walk about with a pyramid of twenty-four pound shot 
in one pocket, a lighted fuse and a few barrels of gunpowder in 
the other — these objects would, as 3'ou may imagine, greatly 
inconvenience the artilleryman in his peaceful state. 

The newspaper writer is therefore most likely mistaken in 
saying that the seamen were in the severe tenue du bord^ or by 
" bord" meaning '' abordage'' — which operation the}' were not, 
in a hai'mless cliurch, hung round with velvet and wax-candles, 
and lilled with ladies, surely* called upon to perform. Nor in- 
deed can it be reasonably supposed that the picked men of the 
crack frigate of the French navy are a "good specimen" of the 
rest of the French marine, any more than a cuirassed colossus 
at the gate of the Horse Guards can be considered a fair sample 
of the British soldier of the line. The sword and pistol, how- 
ever, had no doubt their effect — the former was in its sheath, 
the latter not loaded, and I hear that the French ladies are 
quite in raptures with these charming loirps-de-mer . 

Let the warlike accoutrements then pass. It was necessary, 
perhaps, to strike the Parisians with awe, and therefore the 
crew was armed in this fierce fashion : but why should the cap- 
tain beo'in to swasher as v/ell as his men? and whv did the 
Prince de Joinville lug out sword and pistol so early? or whj', 
if he thought fit to make preparations, should the official jour- 
nals brag of them afterwards as proofs of his extraordinary 
courage ? 

Here is the case. The English Government makes him a 
present of the bones of Napoleon : English workmen work for 
nine hours without ceasing, and dig the coffin out of the ground : 
the Enolish Commissioner hands over the kev of the box to the 
French representative. Monsieur Chabot : English horses carry 
the funeral car down to the sea-shore, accompanied by the Eng- 
lish Governor, who has actually left his bed to walk in the pro- 
cession and to do the French nation honor. 

After receiving and acknow'ledging these politenesses, the 
French captain takes his charge on board, and the first thing 
we afterwards hear of him is the determination " qti'il a su /aire 
P'lsser " into all his crew, to sink rather than yield up the body 
of the Emperor aiix mcmis' de Vetranger — into the hands of 
the foreigner. My dear Monseigneur, is not t\\\s par ti-op fort'? 
Suppose "the foreigner" had wanted the coffin, could he not 
have kept it? Why show this uncalled-for valor, this extraor- 



OF NAPOLEON. 289 

dinaiy alacrity at sinking? Sink or blow yourself up as much 
as you please, but your Royal Highness must see that the gen- 
teel thing wonkl have been to wait until you were asked to do 

so, before you offended good-natured, honest people, who 

heaven help them ! — have never shown themselves at all mur- 
derously inclined towards you. A man knocks up his cabins 
forsooth, throws his tables and chairs overboard, runs cruns 
into the portholes, and calls le qaartier da bord oh exlstaient ces 
thambres^ Lacedcemon. Lacediemon ! There is a province, O 
]'rince, in your royal father's dominions, a fruitful parent of 
heroes in its time, which would have given a much better nick- 
name to your quarlier da bord: you should have called it 
Oascony. 

" Sooner than strike we'll all ex-pi-er 
On board of the Beli-e Pou-le." 

Such fanfaronading is very well on the part of Tom Dibdin, 
but a person of your Royal Highness's ''pious and severe 
dignity " should have been above it. If you entertained an 
idea that war was imminent, would it not have been far better 
to have made your preparations in quiet, and when you found 
the war rumor blow^n over, to have said nothing about what 
you intended to do? Fie upon such cheap Laceda^monianism ! 
There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he 
would have done : however, to do 3'our Ro3'al Highness's nation 
justice, thev brag and fight too. 

This narrative, my dear Miss Smith, as 3'ou will have re- 
marked, is not a simple tale merely, but is accompanied by 
many moral and pithy remarks which form its chief value, in 
the writer's eyes at least, and the above account of the sham 
Lacedaemon on board the "Belle Poule" has a double-barrelled 
morality, as I conceive. Besides justly reprehending the French 
propensity towards braggadocio, it proves verj- stronglj' a point 
on which 1 am the only statesman in Europe who has strongly 
insisted. In the " Paris Sketch Book" it was stated that the 
French hate us. The}' hate us, m}^ dear, profoundly and des- 
perately, and there never was such a hollow humbug in the 
world as the French alliance. Men get a character for patriot- 
ism in P'rance merely by hating England. Directly they go 
into strong opposition (where, you know, people are always 
more patriotic than on the ministerial side), they appeal to the 
people, and have their hold on the people by hating Eng'hHid in 
common with them. Why? It is a long story, and the hatred 
may be accounted for b}' man}- reasons both political and social. 

19 



290 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

Any time these eight hundred j-ears this ill-will has been going 
on, and has been transmitted on the French side from father to 
son. On the French side, not on ours : we have had no, or 
few, defeats to coniplain of, no invasions to make us angiT ; but 
you see that to discuss such a period of time would demand a 
considerable number of pages, and for the present we will avoid 
the examination of the question. 

But they hate us, that is the long and short of it; and 
you see how this hatred has exploded just now, not upon a 
serious cause of difference, but upon an argument: for what is 
the Fasha of Egypt to us or them but a mere abstract opinion? 
For tlie same reason the Little-endians in LilHput abhorred the 
Big-endians ; and I beg you to remark how his Royal Highness 
Prince Ferdinand Mary, upon hearing that this argument was 
in the course of debate between us, straightway flnng his fur- 
niture overboard and expressed a preference for sinking his 
ship I'ather than yielding it to the etranger. Nothing came of 
tiiis wish of his, to be sure ; but tlie intention is everything. 
Unlucky circumstances denied him the power, but he had the will. 

Well, beyond tliis disappointment, the Prince de Joinville 
had nothing to complain of during the voyage, which termi- 
nated happily by the arrival of the '•'• Belle Poule " at Cherbourg, 
on the 30th of November, at five o'clock in the morning. A 
telegrai)h made the glad news known at Paris, where the Min- 
ister of the Interior, Tanneguy-Duchatel (you will read the 
name. Madam, in the old Anglo-French wars), had alread}' 
made ^'immense preparations" for receiving the bod}' of Na- 
poleon. 

The entry was fixed for the loth of December. 

On the 8th of December at Cherbourg the body was trans- 
ferred from the ''Belle Poule" frigate to the " Normandie " 
steamer. On which occasion the mayor of Cherbourg deposited, 
in the name of his tOAvn, a gold iain-el branch upon the cotfin — 
which was saluted by the forts and dykes of the j^lace with one 
THOUSAND GUNS ! There was a treat for the inhabitants. 

There was on board the steamer a splendid receptacle for 
the coffin : ''a temple with twelve pillars and a dome to cover 
it from the wet and moisture, surrounded with velvet hangings 
and silver fringes. At the head was a gold cross, at the foot a 
gold lamp : other lamps were kept constantly burning within, 
and vases of burning incense were hung around. An altar, 
huno- with velvet and silver, was at the mizzen-mast of the 
vessel, and four silcer eagles at each corner of the altar ^ It 
was a compliment at once to Napoleon and — excuse me for 



OF NAPOLEON. 291 

saying so, but so the facts are — to Napoleon and to God 
Almi"htv. 

Three steamers, the " Normandie," the " Velocc," and the 
"• Courrier," Ibnned the expedition from Cherbourg to Havre, 
at wliich place they arrived on the eveni.ng of the Oth of De- 
cember, and where the ^'Veloce" was replaced by the Seine 
steamer, liaving in tow one of the state-coasters, which was to 
fire the salute at the moment when the body was transferred 
into one of the vessels belonging to the Seine. 

The expedition passed Havre the same night, and came to 
anchor at Val de la Haje on the Seine, three leagues below 
Rouen. 

Here the next morning (10th), it was met by the flotilla of 
steamboats of the Upper Seine, consisting of the three ''Do- 
rades," the three '^Etoiles," the '' Elbeuvien," the " Pari- 
sien," the " Parisienne," and the " Zampa." The Prince de 
Joinville, and the persons of the expedition, embarked imme- 
diately in the flotilla, which arrived the same day at Rouen. 

At Rouen salutes were fired, the National Guard on both 
sides of the river paid military honors to the body ; and over 
the middle of the suspension-bridge a magnificent cenotapli was 
erected, decorated with flags, fasces, violet hangings, and the 
imperial arms. Before the cenotaph the expedition stopped, 
and the absolution was given by the archbishop and the clergy. 
After a couple of hours' stay, the expedition proceeded to Pout 
de I'Arche. On the 11th it reached Vernon, on the 12th 
Mantes, on the 13th Maisons-sur-Seine. 

'' Pivery where," says the oflScial account from which the 
above particulars are borrowed, *'the authorities, the National 
Guard, and the people flocked to the passage of the flotilla, 
desirous to render the honors due to his o-lorv, which is the 
glory of France. In seeing its hero return, the nation seemed 
to have found its Palladium again, — the sainted relics of 
victory." 

At length, on the 14th, the coffin was transferred from the 
" Dorade " steamer on board the imperial vessel arrived from 
Paris. In the evening, the imperial vessel arrived at Courbe- 
voie, which was the last stage of the journey. 

Here it was that M. Guizot went to examine the vessel, and 
was ver}' nearly flung into the Seine, as report goes, by the 
patriots assembled there. It is now lying on the river, near 
the Invalides, amidst the drifting ice, whither the people of 
Paris are flocking out to see it. 

The vessel is of a very elegant antique form, and I can give 



292 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

3'0ii on the Thames no better idea of it than by requesting j'ou 
to fancy an immense wherry, of which the stern lias been cut 
straight off, and on which a temple on steps has been elevated. 
At the figure-head is an immense gold eagle, and at the stern 
is a little terrace, filled with evergreens and a profusion of 
banners. Upon pedestals along the sides of the vessel are tri- 
pods in which incense was burned, and underneath them arc 
garlands of flowers called here "immortals." Four eagles sur- 
mount the temple, and a great scroll or garland, held in their 
beaks, surrounds it. It is hung with velvet and gold ; four 
gold caryatides support the entry of it ; and in the midst, upon 
a large platform hung with velvet, and bearing the imperial 
arms, stood the coffin. A steamboat, carrying two hundred 
musicians playing funereal marches and militarv symphonies, 
preceded this magnificent vessel to Courbevoie, where a fu- 
nereal temple was erected, and " a statue of Notre Dame de 
Grace, before which the seamen of the 'Belle Poule' inclined 
themselves, in order to thank her for having granted them a 
noble and glorious voyage." 

Early on the morning of the 15th December, amidst clouds 
of incense, and thunder of cannon, and innumerable shouts of 
people, the coffin was transferred from the barge, and carried 
b}' the seamen of the "Belle Poule" to the Imperial Car. 

And now having conducted our hero almost to the gates of 
Paris, I must tell you what preparations were made in the capi- 
tal to receive him. 

Ten days before the arrival of the body, as you walked 
across the Deputies' Bridge, or over the P3splanade of the In- 
valides, you saw on the bridge eight, on the esplanade thirt3-- 
two, mysterious boxes erected, wherein a couple of score of 
sculptors were at work night and day. 

In the middle of the Invalid Avenue, there used to stand, 
on a kind of shabby fountain or pump, a bust of Lafayette, 
crowned with some dirty Avreaths of '' immortals," and looking 
down at the little streamlet which occasionally dribbled below 
him. The spot of ground was now^ clear, and Lafayette and the 
pump had been consigned to some cellar, to make way for the 
mighty procession that was to pass over the place of their 
habitation. 

Strange coincidence ! If I had been Mr. Victor Hugo, m}- 
dear, or a poet of any note, I would, in a few hours, have 
made an impromptu concerning that Lafayette-crowned pump, 
and compared its lot now to the fortune of its patron sorao 



OF NAPOLEON. 293 

fift}* 3'ears back. From him then issued, as from his fountain 
now, a feeble dribble of pure words ; then, as now, some faint 
circles of disciples were willing to admire him. Certainly in the 
midst of the war and storm without, this pure fount of elo- 
quence went dribbling, driobling on, till of a sudden the revolu- 
tionary workmen knocked down statue and fountain, and the 
gorgeous imperial cavalcade trampled over the spot where they 
stood. 

As for the Champs Elysees, there was no end to the prepa- 
tions ; the first day you saw a couple of hundred scattbldings 
erected at intervals between the handsome gilded gas-lamps 
that at present ornament that avenue ; next day, all these 
scaifoldings were filled with brick and mortar. Presently, over 
the bricks and mortar rose pediments of statues, legs of urns, 
legs of goddesses, legs and bodies of goddesses, legs, bodies, 
and busts of goddesses. Finally, on the 13th December, 
goddesses complete. On the 14th they were painted marble- 
color; and the basements of wood and canvas on which they 
stood were made to resemble the same costly material. The 
funereal urns were ready to receive the frankincense and pre- 
cious odors which were to burn in them. A vast number of 
white columns stretched down the avenue, each bearing a 
bronze buckler on which was written, in gold letters, one of 
the victories of the Emperor, and each decorated with enoi'mous 
imperial flags. On these columns golden eagles were placed ; 
and the newspapers did not fail to remark the ingenious posi- 
tion in which the royal birds had been set : for while those on 
the riicht-hand side of the way had their heads turned toivnrds 
the procession, as if to watch its coming, those on the left were 
looking exactly the other way, as if to regard its progress. Do 
not fancy J ani joking : this point was gravely and emphatically 
urged in many newspapers ; and I do believe no mortal French- 
man ever thought it anything but sublime. 

Do not inten-upt me, sweet Miss Smith. I feel that you are 
angry. I can see from here the pouting of your lips, and know 
what you are going to say. You are going to say, " I will 
read no more of tliis Mr.Titmarsh ; there is no subject, how- 
ever solemn, but he treats it with flippant irreverence, and no 
character, however great, at wh(?m he does not sneer." 

Ah, my dear ! you are young now and enthusiastic ; and your 
Titmarsh'is old, very okb sad, and gray-headed. I have seen 
a poor mother buy a lialfpenny wreath at the gate of Montmarti'c 
buryin^-ground,"and go with it to her little child's grave, and 
hano- it"there over the little humble stone ; and if ever you saw me 



294 



THE SECOXD FUNERAL 



scorn the mean offering of the poor shabby creature, I will give 
you leave to be as angry as you will. The3' sny that on the 
passage of Napoleon's coiiisi down the Seine, old sohliers and 
country people walked miles from tiieir villages just to catch 
a sight of the boat which carried his body and to kueel down 
on the shore and pray for him. God forbid that we should 
quarrel with such prayers and sorrow, or question their sincei'ity. 
Somethiug great and good must have been in this man, some- 
thing loving and kindly, that has kept his name so cherished 
in the popular memory, and gained him such lasting reverence 
and afiection. 

But, Madam, one may respect the dead without feeling awe- 
stricken lit tlie plumes of the hearse ; and I see no reasou whv 
one should sympathize with the train of mutes and undertakers, 
however deep may be their mourning. Look, I pray you, at 
the manner in which I he Frencjh nation has performed Napo- 
leon's funeral. Time out of mind, nations have raised, in 
memory of their heroes, august muusoleums, grand [)yrumids, 
splendid statues of gold or marble, sacrilicing whatever they 
had that was most costly and rare, or that was most beautiful 
ill art, as tokens of their res[}ect and love for the dead person. 
What a fine example of this sort of sacrifice is that (recorded 
in a book of which Simplicity is the great characteristic) of the 
poor woman who brought her pot of precrious ointment — her 
all, and hiid it at the i'eet of the Object whieh, upon earth, she 
most loved and respected. '-Economists and calculators" 
there were even in those days who quarrelled with the manner in 
which the poor woman lavished so much ''capital;" but you 
will I'emember how nobly and generously the sacrifice was ap- 
[)recinted, and how the economists were put to shame. 

With regard to the funeral ceremony that has just been per- 
formed here, it is said that a fai'uous public personage and 
statesman. JNIonsieur Tiiiers indeed, spoke with the bitterest 
indignation of the genei'al style of the preparations, and of 
their mean and tawdry character. He would have had a pomp 
as magiiificent, he said, as that of Rome at the triumph of 
Aurelian : he would have decorated the bridges and avemies 
through which the procession w-as to pass, with the costliest 
marbles and tiie finest works o»l* art, and have had them to re- 
main there for ever as monuments of the ^reat funeral. 

The economists and calculators might here interpose with 
a great deal of reason ; for, indeed, there was no reason why 
a nation should impoverish itself to do honor to the memory 
of an individual for whom, after all, it can feel but a qualified 



OF NAPOLEON. 295 

enthusiasm : but it snrel}' might have employed the large sum 
voted lor the purpose more wisely- and generously, and recorded 
its respect for ^sapoleon b}' some worthy and lasting memorial, 
rather than have erected yonder thousand vain heaps of tinsel, 
paint, and plaster, that are already cracking and crumbling in 
the frost, at three days old. 

Scarcely one of the statues, indeed, deserves to last a month : 
some are odious distortions and caricatures, which never should 
have been allowed to stand for a moment. On llie very day 
of the fete, the wind was shaking the canvas pedestals, and the 
flimsy wood-work had begun to gape and give way. At a little 
distance, to be sure, you could not see the cracks ; and pedestals 
and statues looLrd like marble. At some distance, you could 
not tell but that the wreaths and eagles were gold embroidery, 
and not gilt paper — the great tricolor liags dama.sk, and not 
Btrioed calico. One would think that these sham splendors 
betokened sham respect^ if one had not known that the name 
of ^'apoleon is held in real reverence, and observed somewhat 
of the character of the nation. Keal feelings they have, but 
they distort them by exaggeration ; real courage, which they 
render ludicrous by intolerable braggadocio; and I think the 
above official account of the Prince de Joinville's proceedings, 
of the manner in which the Emperor's remains have been 
treated in their voyage to the capital, and of the preparations 
made to receive him in it, will give my dear Miss Smith some 
means of understanding the social and moral condition of this 
worthy people of France. 



III. 

ON THE FUNERAL CEREMONY. 

Shall I tell you, my dear, that when Fran9ois woke me at 
<i very earlv hour on this eventful morning, while the keen stars 
were still o'littering overhead, a half-moon, as sharp as a razoi-, 
beaming in the frosty skv, and a wicked north wind blowmg, 
that blew the blood out of one's fingers and froze your l?g as 
you put it out of bed ; — shall I tell you, my dear, that when 
Frau90is called me, and said, ''Via vot' cafe. Monsieur lite- 



296 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

masse, bnvez-le, tiens, il est tout cbaurl," I felt m\'self, after 
imbibing the hot breakfast, so comfortable under three blan- 
kets aixl a mackintosh, that for at least a quarter of an hour 
no man in Europe could sa^' whether Titmarsh would or would 
not be present at the burial of the Emperor Napoleon. 

Besides, m}' dear, the cold, there was another reason for 
doubting. Did the P^encli nation, or did the^' not, intend to 
OiTor up some of us English over the imperial grave? And 
were the games to be concluded by a massacre? It was said 
in the newspapers that Lord Granville had despatched circulars 
to all the English resident in Paris, begging them to keep their 
homes. The French journals announced this news, and warned 
U3 charitably of the fate intended for us. Had Lord Granville 
TvU'itten? Certainly not to me. Or had he written to all except 
me? And was I the victim — the doomed one? — to be seized 
directly I showed m}^ face in the Champs Eh'sees, and torn in 
pieces hj French Patriotism to the frantic chorus of the '' Mar- 
seillaise?" Depend on it. Madam, that high and low in this 
city on Tuesday were not altogether at their ease, and that the 
bravest felt no small tremor! And be sure of this, that as his 
Majesty Louis Philippe took his nightcap off his roj-al head 
chat morning, he prayed heartily that he might, at night, put 
it on in safety. 

Well, as my companion and I came out of doors, being 
bound for the Church of the Iiivalides, for which a Deputy had 
kindly furnished us with tickets, we saw the very prettiest 
sight of the whole day, and I can't refrain from mentioning it 
to my dear, tender-hearted Miss Smith. 

In the same house where I live (but about five stories nearer 
the ground) lodges an English family, consisting of— 1. A 
great-grandmother, a hale, handsome old lady of seventy, the 
very best-dressed and neatest old lady in Paris. 2. A grand- 
father and grandmother, tolerably young to bear that title. 
3. A daughter. And 4. Two little great-grand, or grand- 
children, that may be of the age of three and one, and belong 
to a son and daughter who are in India. The grandfather, 
who i 5 as proud of his wife as he was thirty years ago when he 
inirried, and pays her compliments still twice or thrice in a 
day, and when he leads her into a room looks round at the 
])LM'3on3 assembled, and says in his heart, "Here, gentlemen, 
here is my wife — show me such another woman in England," 
— this gentleman had hired a room on the Champs Elysees, 
for he would not have his wife catch cold by exposing her to 
the balconies in the open air. 



OF NAPOLEON. 297 

When I came to the street, I found the family assembled in 
the following order of march : — - 

No. 1, the great-grandniotlier walking daintily along, supported 

by No. 3, her granddaughter. 

A nurse carrying No. 4 junior, who was sound asleep : and a huge 

basket containing saucepans, bottles of milk, parcels of infants' 
food, certain dimity napkins, a child's coral, and a little horse 
belonging to No. 4 senior. 

A servant bearing a basket of condiments. 

No. 2, grandfather, spick and span, clean shaved, hat brushed, 

white buckskin gloves, bamboo cane, brown great-coat, walking 
as upright and solemn as may be, havii^g his lady on liis arm. 

No. 4, senior, vvitli mottled legs and a tartan costume, who was 

frisking about between his grandpapa's legs, who heartily wished 
him at home. 



*'M3' dear," his face seemed to say to his lady, "I think 
3'on might have left the little things in the nursery, for we shall 
have to squeeze through a terrible crowd in the Champs EI3'- 
sees." 

The lad}' was going out for a day's pleasure, and her face 
was full of care : she had to look first after her old motlier who 
was walking ahead, then after No. 4 junior with the nurse — he 
might fall into all sorts of danger, wake np, cry, catch cold ; 
nurse might slip down, or heaven knows what. Then she had 
to look her husband in the face, who had gone to such expense 
and been so kind for her sake, and make that gentlemau be- 
lieve she was thoroughly happ3' ; and, finally, she had to keep 
an e3'e upon No. 4 senior, who, as she was perfectl\' certain, 
was about in two minutes to be lost for ever, or trampled to 
pieces in the crowd. 

These events took place in a quiet little street leading into 
the Champs Elysees, the entry of which we had almost reached 
by this time. The four detachments above described, which 
had been straggling a Uttle in their passage down the street, 
closed up at the end of it, and stood for a moment huddled 
together. No. 3, Miss X , began speaking to her compan- 
ion the great-grandmother. 

" Hush, my dear," said that old lady, looking round alarmed 
at her daughter. " Speak French" And she straiglitway be- 
gan nervously to make a speech which she supposed to be in 
that language, but wMiich was as much like French as Iroquois. 
The whole secret was out: yon could read it in the grand- 
mother's face, who was doing"^ all she could to keep from cry- 
Ino- and looked as friofhtened as she dared to look. The two 



298 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

elder ladies had settled between them that there was going to 
be a general English slaiightar that day, and had brought the 
children with them, so that they might all be murdered in 
company. 

God bless yon, women, moist-eyed and tender-hearted ! 
In those gentle silly tears of yours there is something touches 
one, be they never so foolish. I don't think there were many 
such natural dro^)S shed that day as tliose wliich just made 
their appearance in the grandmother's e3'es, and then went 
back again as if thej' had been ashamed of themselves, while 
the good lady and her little troop walked across tlie road. 
Think how happ}' she will be when night comes, and there has 
been no murder of English, and the brood is all nestled under 
her wings sound asleep, and she is lying awake thanking God 
that the day and its pleasures and pains are over. "Wliilst we 
were considering these things, the grandfather had suddenly 
elevated No. 4 senior upon liis left shoulder, and I saw Ihc 
tartan hat of that young gentleman, and the bamboo cane 
which had been transferred to him, high over the hends of the 
crowd on the opposite side through which the party moved. 

After this little procession had passed away — you may 
laugh at it, but upon my word and conscience, Miss Smith, I 
saw notliing in the course of tlic day which affected mc more — 
after this little procession had passed away, the other came, 
accompanied by gun-banging, flag-waving, incense-burning, 
trumpets pealing, drums rolling, and at the close, received by 
the voice of six hundred choristers, sweetly modulated to the 
tones of fifteen score of fiddlers. Then you saw horse and 
foot, iack-boots and bear-skin, cuirass and bayonet, National 
Guard and Line, marshals and generals all over gold, smart 
aides-de-camp galloping about like mad, and high in the midst 
of all, ridino- on his golden buckler, Solomon in all his glory, 
forsooth — Imperial Cnesar, with his crown over his head, 
laurels and standards waving about his gorgeous chariot, and 
a million of people looking on in wonder and awe. 

His Majesty the Emperor and King reclined on his shield, 
with his head a little elevated. His Majesty's skull is volumi^ 
nous, his forehead broad and large. We remarked that his Im- 
perial Majesty's brow was of a yellowish color, which appearance 
was also visible about the orbits of the eyes. He kept his 
eyelids constantly closed, by which w^e had the opportunity of 
observing that the upper lids were garnished with eyelashes. 
Years and climate have effected upon the face of this great 




^---^x-i^_ .^'.s^'i^^S 






MURAT. 



OF NAPOLEOX. 299 

2-nonnrch only a trifling alteration ; we may say, indeed, tliat 
Time lias touched iiis Imperial and Royal Majesty with the 
lightest feather in his wing. In the nose of the Conqueror of 
Aiisterlitz We remarked very little alteration : it is of tlie beau- 
tiful shape wiiich we remember it possessed live-and-twentv 
years since, ere unfortunate circumstances induced him to leave 
U3 for a while. The nostril and the tube of the nose appear 
to have undergone some slight alteration, but in examining a 
beloved object the eye of affection is perhaps too critical. 
Vive V l^jinpereur ! the soldier of Marengo is among us again. 
His lips are thinner, perhaps, than the}' were before! how 
white liis teeth are ! you can just see three of them pressing his 
under li[) ; and pray remark the fulness of his cheeks and the 
round contour of his chin. Oh, those beautiful white hands ! 
many a time have they patted the clieek of poor Josephine, and 
played with the black ringlets of her hair. She is dead now, 
anrl cold, poor creature ; and so are Hortense and bold Eugene, 
"' than whom the world never saw a curtier knight," as was 
said of Kin-y Arthur's >Sir Lancelot. What a day would it have 
been ftn* those three could they have lived until now, and seen 
their hero retnrnin"" ! Where's Nev? His wife sitslookins: out 
from iM. Flahaut's window yonder, buttlie bravest of the brave 
i3 not with her. Murat too is absent: honest Joachim doves 
the Emperor at heart, and repents that he was not at Water- 
loo : who iinows but that at the sii>ht of the handsome swords- 
man those stubborn English "'- canaille" would have given way. 
A king. Sire, is, yon know, the greatest of slaves — State affairs 
of consequence — his Majesty the King of Naples is detained 
no doubt. When we last saw the King, however, and his 
Highness the Prince of Elchingen, they looked to have as good 
health as ever they had in their lives, and we heard each of 
them calmly calling out " FireT' as they have done in number- 
less battles before. 

Is it possible? can the Emperor forget? We don't like to 
brca!v it to him, but has he forgotten all about the farm at 
Piz30, an;l the garden of the Observatory? Yes, truly: there 
h? lies on his golden shield, never stu'Jing, never so much as 
lii'ting his eyelids, or opening his lips any wider. 

rcm'J'i^i van'ttainm! Here is oiu' Sovereign in all his 
glory, and they lired a thousand guns at Cherbourg and never 
woke him ! 

However, we are advancing matters by several hours, and 
you must give just as much credence as you please to the sub- 



300 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

joined remarks concerning the Procession, seeing that 3'our hnm- 
ble servant could not possibly be present at it, being bound lor 
the church elsewhere. 

Programmes, however, hnve been published of the affair, 
and your vivid fancy will not fail to give life to them, and the 
whole mngnilicent train will pass before you. 

Fancy then, that the guns are fired at Neuilly : the body 
landed at daybreak from the funereal barge, and transferred to 
the car ; and fanc\' the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine, 
rolling on four wheels of an antique shape, which supported a 
basement adorned with golden eagles, banners, laurels, and 
velvet hangings. Above the hangings stand twelve golden 
statues with raised arms supporting a huge shield, on which the 
coffin la}'. On the coffin was the imperial crown, covered with 
violet velvet crape, and the whole vast machine was drawn by 
horses in superb housings, led by valets in the imperial 
livery. 

Fancy at the head of the procession first of all — 

Tlie Gendarmerie of tlie Seine, with their trumpets and Colonel. 
The Miuiicipal Guard (horse), with their trumpets, standard, and 

Colonel. 
^ Two squadrons of the 7th Lancers, with Colonel, standard, and 

music. 
The Commandant of Paris and his Staff. 
A battalion of Infantry of the Line, with their flag, sappers, drums, 

music, and Colonel. 
The Municipal Guard (foot), with flag, drums, and Colonel. 
The Sapper-pumpers, with ditto. 

Tlien picture to yourself more squadrons of Lancers and Cuiras- 
sfers. The General of the ])ivision and his Staff ; all officers of 
all arms employed at Paris, and unattached ; the Military School 
of Saint Cyr. the Polytechnic School, the School of the Etat- 
Major ; and the Professors and Staff of each. Go on imagining 
more battalions of Infantry, of Artillery, companies of Engi- 
neers, squadrons of Cuirassiers, ditto of tlie Cavalr}^ of the Na- 
tional Guard, and the first and second legions of ditto. 

Fancy a carriage, containing the Chaplain of the St. Helena expe- 
dition, tlie only clerical gentleman that formc^d a part of the 
procession. 

Fancy you hear the funereal music, and then figure in your mind's 
eye — 

Thk Empekot^'s Ciiaroer, that is. Napoleon's own saddle and 
bridle (when First Consul) upon a white horse. The saddle 
(wliich lias been kept ever since in the Garde Meuble of the 
Crown) is of amaranth velvet, embroidered in gold : the holsters 
and housings are of the same rich material. On them you re- 
mark the attributes of War, Commerce, Science, and Art. The 
bits end stirrups aie silver-gilt chased. Over the stirrups, two 



OF NAPOLEON. 301 

eagles were placed at the time of the empire. The horse was 
covered with a violet crape embroidered with golden bees. 

After this came more Soldiers, General Officers, Sub-Officers, Mar- 
shals, and what was said to be the prettiest siglit almost of tlie 
whole, the banners of the eighty-six Departments of France. 
These are due to tlie invention of M. Tliiers. and were to have 
been accompanied by federates from each ])epartmcnt. But the 
government very wisely mistrusted this and some other projects 
of Monsieur Thiers ; and as for a federation, my dear, it has 
been tried. Next comes — 

His Royal Highness, the Prince de Joinville. 

The 500 sailors of the " Belle Poule " marciiing in double file on 
each side of 

THE CAR. 

[Hush ! the enormous crowd thrills as it passes, and only some few 
voices cry Vive I'Em/iereiir! Shining golden in the frosty sun — 
with hundreds of thousands of eyes upon it, from houses and 
liousetops, from balconies, black, purple, and tricolor, from tops 
of leafless trees, from beliind long lines of glittering bayonets 
under schakos and bear-skin caps, from behind the Line and the 
National Guard again, pushing, struggling, heaving, panting, 
eager, the heads of an enormous multitude stretching 
out to meet and follow it, amid?^ long avenues of 
columns and statues gleaming white, of standards 
rainbow-colored, of golden eagles, of pale fu- 
nereal urns, of discharging odors amidst 
huge volumes of pitch-black smoke, 

CHE GREAT IMPERIAL CHARIOT 

ROLLS MAJESTICALLY ON. 

The cords of the pall are held by two Marshals, an Admiral and 
General Bertrand; who are followed by — 

The Prefects of the Seine and Police, &c. 

The Mayors of Paris. &c. 

The Members of the Old Guard, &c. 

A Squadron of Light Dragoons, &c. 

Lieutenant-General Schneider, «S:c. 

More cavalry, more infantry, more artillery, more everybody ; and 
as the procession passes, the Line and the National Guard form- 
ing line on each side of the road fall in and follow it, until it 
arrives at the Church of the Invalides, where the >st honors 
are to be paid to it] 

Among the company assembled under the dome of that edi- 
fice, the casual observer would not perhaps have remarked a 
gentleman of the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, who never- 
theless was there. But as, my dear Miss Smith, the descrip- 
tions in this letter, from the words in page 298. line '10 — tlie 
party moved — u\y to the words paid to it, on this page, have 
purely emanated fi-om your obedient servant's fancy, and not 
from "his personal observation (for no being on earth, except a 



r» 



02 THE SECOXD FUNERAL 






newspaper reporter, can be in two places at once), permit rae 
now to communicate to von what little circumstances tell under 
ray own paiticular view on the day of the loth of December. 

As we came out, the air and the buildings round about were 
tinged with purple, and the clear shaq) half-moon before-men- 
tioned was still in the sky, where it seemed to be lingering as if 
it would catch a peep of the connnenccment of the famous pro- 
cession. The Arc de Trioraphe was shining in a keen frosty 
sunshine, and looking as clean and rosy as if it had just made 
its toilette. The canvas or pasteboard image of Napoleon, of 
which onlv the "ilded legs had been erected the ni^•ht previous, 
was now visible, bod}', head, crown, sceptre and all, and made 
an imposing show. Long gilt banners were flaunting about, 
with the imperial cipher and eagle, and the names of the bat- 
tle i and ^■icto^ies glittering in gold. The long avenues of the 
Chiim^js Elysies h id b^en covered with sand for the con- 
venience of the great procession that was to tramp across it 
that day. Hundreds of people were marching to and fro, 
laughing, chattering, singing, gesticulating as happy French- 
men do. There is no pleasanter sight than a French crowd on 
the alert for a festival, and nothing more catching than their 
good humor. As for the notion which has been put forward by 
some of the opposition newspapers that the populace were on 
this occasion unusually solemn or sentimental, it would be pay- 
ing a bad compliment to the natural gayetyofthe nation, tosa}' 
that it was, on the morning at least of the 15th of December, 
affected in any such absurd wa}'. Itinerant merchnnts were 
bhouling out lustily their connnodities of segars aujl brandy, 
and the weather was so bitter cold, that they could not fail to 
find plenty of customers. Carpenters and workmen were still 
niakinii,' a liu2:e banking' and clattering* nmong the sheds which 
were built for the accommodation of the visitors. Some of these 
sheds were hung with black, such as one sees before churches, 
in funerals ; some were rol)ed in violet, in compliment to thej 
Emperor whose mourning the}* put on. Most of them had tine' 
tricolor hangings with appropriate inscriptions to the glorj- of 
the French arms. 

All along the Champs Elysees were nrns of plaster-of-Paris 
destined to coPitain funeral incense and flames ; columns deco- 
rated with huge flags of blue, I'ed, and white, embroidered with 
shining crowns, eagles, and N's in gilt paper, and statues of 
plaster rei)resenLing Nymphs, Triumphs, Victories, or other 
female personages, painted in oil so as to represent marble. 
Real marble could have had no better etfect, and the appear- 




Napoleon's Funeral. 



p 



OF NAPOLEON. S03 

ance of the whole was lively and picturesque in the extreme. On 
each pillar was a buckler, of the color of l.>rouze, bearing the name 
and date of a battle in gilt letters : you had to walk°through a 
mile-long avenue of these glorious reminiscences, telling of 
spots where, in the great imperial days, throats had been vfcto- 
liously cut. 

As we passed down the avenue, several troops of soldiers 
met us : the garde-muacipale a cheval^ in brass helmets and 
shining jack-boots, noble-looking men, large, on large horses, 
the pick of the old army, as I have heard, a^id armed for the 
special occupation of peace-keeping : not the most glorious, 
but the best part of the soldier's duty, as I fancy. Then came 
a regiment of Carabineers, one of Infantry — little, alert, brown- 
faced, good-humored men, their band at their head playing 
sounding marches. These were followed by a regiment or 
detachment of the Municipals on foot — two or three inches 
taller than the men of the Line, and conspicuous for their neat- 
ness and discipline. By-and-by came a squadron or so of 
dragoons of the National Guards : they are covered with straps, 
buckles, aguillettes, and cartouche-boxes, and make under their 
triL'olor cock's-plumes a show sufllciently wai"like. The point 
which chiefly struck me on beholding these militaj'y men of the 
National Guard and the Line, was the admirable manner in 
which they bore a cold that seemed to me as sharp as the 
weather in the Russian retreat, through which cold the troops 
werft trotting without trembling and in the utmost cheerfulness 
and good-humor. An aide-de-camp galloped past in white 
pantaloons. By heavens ! it made me shudder to look at him. 

With this profound reflection, we turned away to the right 
tow^ards the hanging-bridge (where we met a detachment of 
young men of the Ecole de I'P^tat Major, flne-looking lads, but 
sadly disfigured by the wearing of stays or belts, that make the 
waists of the French dandies of a most absurd tenuity), and 
speedily passed into the avenue of statues leading up to the 
Invalides. All tliese were statues of warriors from Ney to 
Charlemagne, modelled in clay for the nonce, and placed here 
to meet the corpse of the greatest warrior of all. Passing these, 
we had to walk to a little door at the back of the Invalides, 
wlicre was a crowd of persons plunged in the deepest mourning, 
and pushing for places in the chapel within. 

The chapel is spacious and of no great architectural preten- 
sions, but was on this occasion gorgeously decorated in honor 
of the great person to whose body it was about to give shelter. |j 

We had arrived at nine : the ceremony was not to begin, 



304 THE SECOXD FUNERAL 

thev said, till two : we bad five hoars before us to see all that 
from our places could be seen. 

We saw that the roof, up to the first Hues of architecture, 
was huno; with violet ; bevond this with bhxcl^. We sr^w N's, 
eagles, bees, laurel wreatlis, and other such imperial emblems, 
adorning every nook and corner of the edifice. Between the 
arches, on each side of the aisle, were painted trophies, on which 
were written the names of some of Napoleon's Generals and of 
their principal deeds of arms — and not thcnr deeds of arras 
alone, ■pardi^ but their coats of arms too. O stars and gartei's ! 
but this is too much. AVhat was Nc^y's paternal coat, prithee, 
or honest Junot's quarterings, or the venerable escutcheon of 
King Joachim's father, the innkeeper? 

You and I, dear Miss Smith, know the exact value of heral- 
dic bearings. We know that though the greatest pleasure of 
all is to acl like a gentleman, it is a pleasure, nay a merit, to he 
one — to come of an old stock, to have an honorable pedigree, 
to be able to say that centuries back our fathers had gentle 
blood, and to us transmitted the same. There is a good in gen- 
tility : the man wiio questions it is envious, or a coarse dullard 
not able to perceive the dilference between high breediug and 
low. One has in the same wa}' heard a man brag that he 
did not know the dilference between wines, not he — give him 
a good glass of port, and he would pitch all your claret to the 
deuce. My love, men often brag about their own dulness in 
this way. 

In the matter of gentlemen, democrats cry, ''Psha! Give 
us one of Nature's gentlemen, and hang your aristocrats." And 
so indeed Nature does make so//?e gentlemen — a few here and 
there. But Art makes most. Good birth, that is, good hand- 
some well-formed lathers and mothers, nice cleanly nurser^'- 
maids, good meals, good physicians, good education, few cares, 
pleasant easy habits of life, and luxuries not too gi-eat or ener- 
vating, but onl^- refining — a course of these going on for a few 
generations are the best gentleman-makers in the world, and 
beat. Nature hollow. 

If, respected jMadam, j'ou say that there is something hciter 
than gentility in this wicked world, and that honesty and 
personal wealth are more valuable than all the politeness and 
higli-breeding that ever wore red-heeled pumps, knights' spurs, 
or Hobv's boots, Titmarsh for one is never goinii: to sav \ou 
nay. If you even go so far as to say that the very existence of 
this super-genteel society among us, from the slavish respect 
that we pay to it, from the dastardly manner in which we 



OF NAPOLEON. ' 305 

attempt to imitate its airs and ape its vices, goes far to destroy 
honesty of intercourse, to make us meanly ashamed of our natu- 
ral alfections and honest, harmless usages, and so does a great 
deal more harm than it is possible it can do good by its example 
— perhaps, Madam, you speak with some sort of reason. Po- 
tato myself, I can't help seeing that the tulip yonder has the best 
place in the garden, and the most sunshine, and the most water, 
and the best tendhig — and not liking him over well. But I 
can't help acknowledging that Nature has given him a much 
finer dress than ever I can hope to have, and of this, at least, 
must give him the benefit. 

Or say, we are so many cocks and hens, my dear (sans 
arriere pensee)^ with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty 
sleek, decent picking here and there in the straw-yard, and 
tolerable snua; roostins; in the barn : vonder on the terrace, in 
the sun, walks Peacock, stretching his proud neck, squealing 
every now and then in the most pert fashionable voice and 
flaunting his great supercilious dandified tail. Don't let us be 
too angry, my dear, with the useless, haught}', insolent creature, 
because he despises us. Sometlniuj is there about Peacock that 
we don't possess. Strain your neck ever so, you can't make it 
as long or as blue as his — cock your tail as much as you please, 
and it will never be half so fine to look at. But the most ab- 
surd, disgusting, contemptible sight in the world would you and 
I be, leaving the barn-door for my ladj-'s flower-gai'den, for- 
saking our natural sturd}' walk for the peacock's genteel rickety 
stride, and adopting the squeak of his voice in the place of our 
gallant lusty cock-a-doodle-dooing. 

Do you take the allegory? I love to speak in such, and the 
above types have been presented to my mind while sitting 
opposite a gimcrack coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted 
in the Invalides Church, and assigned to one of the Emperor's 
Generals. 

Ventrehleu! Madam, what need have they of coats-of-arms 
and coronets, and wretched imitations of old exploded aristo- 
cratic oewoaws that thoy had fluno- out of the country — with the 
heads of the owners in them sometimes, for indeed they were not 
particular — a score of 3'ears before ? What business, forsooth, 
had they to be meddling with gentility and aping its ways, who 
had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and a pride of 
their own to support, if proud they were inclined to be? A clever 
young man (who was not of high family himself, but had been 
bred up genteelly at Eton and the university) — young Mr. 
Georoe Cannino-,' at the commencement of the French Revolu- 

iiO 



r) 



06 THE SECOND FUNERAL 



tion, sneered at " Roland the Just, with ri])bons in his shoes," 
and the dandies, who then wore buckles, voted the sarcasm 
monstrous kilhng. It was a joke, m^' dear, worth}' of a lackey, 
or of a siih' smart parvenu, not knowing the society into which 
bis hick had cast him (God help him ! in later years, they taught 
him what they were!), and fancying in his silly intoxication 
that simplicit}' was ludicrous and fashion respectable. See, 
now, fifty years are gone, and where are shoebuckles? Ex- 
tinct, defunct, kicked into the irrevocable past ot!' the toes of 
all P^urope ! 

How fatal to the parvenu, throughout history, has been this 
respect for shoebuckles. Where, for instance, would the Empij'e 
of Napoleon have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported 
such a thing as a coat-of-arms, and had only written their simple 
names on their shields, after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon 
yonder? — the bold Republican who led the crowning charge at 
Marengo, and sent the best blood of the Holy Roman Empire 
to the right-al)out, before the wretched misbegotten imperial 
heraldr}' was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the father 
of it. It has always been so. The}' won't amalgamate. A 
country must be governed by the one principle or the other. 
But give, in a republic, an aristocracy ever so little chance, and 
it works and plots and sneaks and bullies and sneers itself into 
place, and you find democracy out of doors. Is it good that 
the aristocracy shoukl so triumph? — that is a question that 
you may settle according to your own notions and taste ; and 
permit me to say, I do not care twopence how you settle it. 
Large books have been written upon the subject in a variety 
of languages, and coming to a variety of conclusions. Great 
statesmen are thei'e in our country, from Lord I^ondonderry 
down to Mr. Vincent, each in his degree maintaining his differ- 
ent opinion. But here, in the matter of Napoleon, is a simple 
fact: he founded a great, glorious, strong, potent republic, able 
to cope with the best aristocracies in the world, and perhaps to 
beat them all ; he converts his republic into a monarchy, and 
surrounds his monarchy with what he calls aristocratic insti- 
tutions ; and you know w'hat becomes of him. The [)eople 
estranged, the aristocracy faithless (when did they ever pardon 
one who was not of themselves?) — the imi)erial fabric tumbles 
to the ground. If it teaches nothing else, my dear, it teaches 
one a great point of policy — namely, to stick by one's party. 

While these thoughts (and sundry others relative to the hor- 
rible cold of the place, the intense dulness of dela}', the stu- 
pidity of leaving a warm bed and a breakfast in order to witness 



OF xapolp:o^. 307 

a procession that is much better performed at a theatre) 

while these thoughts were passing in the mind, the church began 
to Mil apace, and you saw that the hour of the ceremonj' was 
drawino; near. 

Jnipn'nds, came men with lighted staves, and set fire to at 
least ten thousand wax-candles that were hanging in brilliant 
chandehers in various parts of the chapel. Curtains were 
dropped over the upper windows as these illuminations were 
effected, and the church was left only to the funereal light of 
the spermaceti. To the right was the dome, round the cavity 
of which sparkling lamps were set, that designed the shape of 
it brilliantly against the darkness. In the midst, and where 
the altar used to stand, rose the catafalque. And why not? 
Who is God here but Napoleon ? and in him the sceptics hfive 
already ceased to believe ; but the people does still somewhat. 
He and Louis XIV. divide the worship of the place between 
them. 

As for the catafalque, the best that I can say for it is that 
it is really a noble and imposing-looking edifice, with tall jjillars 
supporting a grand dome, with innumerable escutcheons, stand- 
ards, and allusions militarv and funereal. A ereat ea^le of 
course tops the whole : tripods burning spirits of wine stand 
round this kind of dead man's throne, and as we saw it (by 
peering over the heads of our neighbors in the front rank), it 
looked, in the niidst of the black concave, and under the efiect 
of half a thousand flashing cross-lights, properly grand and tall. 
The effect of the whole chapel, however (to speak the jargon 
of the painting-room), was spoiled by being cut up: there were 
too many objects for tiie eye to rest upon : the ten thousand 
wax-candles, for instance, in their numberless twinkling chan- 
deliers, the raw tranchant colors of the new banners, wreaths, 
bees, N's, and other emblems dotting the place all over, and 
incessantly puzzling, or rather bofheriiig the behoklcr. 

High overhead, in a sort of mist, with the glare of their 
original colors worn down by dust and time, hung long rows of 
dim ghostly-looking standards, captured in old days from the 
enemy. They were, I thought, the best and most solemn part 
of the show. 

To suppose that the people were bound to be solemn during 
the ceremony is to exact from them something quite needless 
and unnatural. The very fact of a squeeze dissipates all solem- 
nity. One great crowd is always, as I imagine, prett3' much 
like another. In the course of the last few 3ears 1 have seen 
three : that attendino- the coronation of our present sovereign, 



308 THE SECOND FUNERAL 

that wliich went to see Conrvoisier hanged, and this which 
witnessed the Napoleon ceremon}'. The people so assembled 
for hours together are jocular rather than solemn, seeking to 
pass away the wear}^ time with tlie best amusements that will 
olfer. There was,, to be sure, in all the scenes above alluded 
to, just one moment — one particular moment — when the uni- 
versal people feels a shock and is for that second serious. 

But except for that second of time, I declare I saw no 
seriousness here beyond that of ennui. The church began to 
fill with personages of all ranks and conditions. P'irst, opposite 
our seats came a company of fat grenadiers of the National 
Guard, who presently, at the word of command, put theii 
muskets down against benches and wainscots, until the arrival 
of the procession. For seven hours these men formed the 
object of the most anxious solicitude of all the ladies and gentle- 
men seated on our benches : they began to stamp their feet, 
for the cold was atrocious, and we were frozen where we sat. 
Some of them fell to blowing their fingers ; one executed a 
kind of dance, such as one sees often here in cold weather — - 
the individual jumps repeatedly upon one leg, and kicks out 
the other violenth', meanwhile his hands are flapping across 
his chest. Some fellows opened their cartouche-boxes, aud 
from them drew eatables of various kinds. You can't think 
how anxious we were to know the qualities of the same. 
" Tiens, ce gros qui mange une cuisse de volaille ! " — "11 a 
du jambon, celui-la." "I should like some, too," growls an 
Englishman, "for I hadn't a morsel of breakfast," and so on. 
This is the way, ni}' dear, that we see Napoleon buried. 

Did you ever see a chicken escape from clown in a panto- 
mime, and hop over into the pit, or amongst the fiddlers? and 
have you not seen the shrieks of enthusiastic laughter that the 
wondrous incident occasions? We had our chicken, of course : 
there never was a public crowd without one. A poor unhappy 
woman in a greasy plaid cloak, with a battered rose-colored 
plush bonnet, was seen talving her place among the stalls 
allotted to the srandees. " Vovez done I'Ano-laise." said every- 
body, and it was too true. You could swear that the wretch 
was an En2:lishw"oman : a bonnet w-as never made or w^orn so 
in any other countrv. Half an hour's deliohtful amusement 
did this lady oive us all. She was whisked from seat to seat 
by the huissiers, and at every change of place woke a peal of 
laughter. 1 was glad, however, at the end of the day to see 
the old pink bonnet over a very comfortable seat, which some- 
body had not claimed and she had kept. 



OF N-APOLEON. 309 

Are not these remarkable incidents? The next wonder we 
saw was the arrival of a set of tottering old Invalids, wiio took 
their i)laces nnder us with drawn sabres Tlien came a superb 
drum-inajor, a handsome smiling good-humored giant of a man, 
his breeches astonishingly embroidered with silver lace. Him 
a dozen little drummer-bo^'S followed — '' the little darlings ! " 
all the ladies cried out in a breath : the^' were indeed prett}' 
little lellows, and came and stood close under us : the huo-e 
drum-major smiled over his little red-capped flock, and for 
man}' hours in the most perfect contentment twiddled his mous- 
taches and pla\'ed with the tassels of his cane. ♦ 

Now the compau}- began to arrive thicker and thicker. A 
whole cove}' of ConseiUers-cr Etat came in, in blue coats, em- 
broidered with blue silk, then came a crowd of lawyers in 
toques and caps, among whom were sundry venerable Judges 
in scarlet, purple velvet, and ermine — a kind of Bajazet cos- 
• turne. Look there! there is the Turkish Ambassador in his 
red cap, turning his solemn brown face about and looking pre- 
ternaturall>' wise. Tiie Deputies walk in in a bod}'. Guizot 
is not there : he passed by just now in full ministerial costume. 
Presently little Thiers saunters back : what a clear, broad 
sharp-eyed face the fellow^ has, with his gray hair cut down so 
demure ! A servant passes, pushing through the crowd a 
shabby wheel-chair. It has just brought old Mongey the Gov- 
ernor of the Invalids, the honest old man who defended Paris 
so stoutly in 1814. He has been very ill, and is worn down 
almost by infirmities : but in his illness he was perpetually 
asking, " Doctor, shall I live till the 15th? Give me till then, 
and I die contented." One can't help believing that the old 
man's wish is honest, however one may doubt the piety of 
another illustrious Marshal, who once carried a candle before 
Charles X. in a procession, and has been this morning to 
Neuilly to kneel and pray at the foot of Napoleon's coffin. He 
might have said his prayers at home, to be sure ; but don't let 
us ask too much : that kind of reserve is not a Frenchman's 
chai'acteristic. 

Bang — bang ! At about half-past two a dull sound of can- 
nonading was heard without the church, and signals took place 
between the Commandant of the Invalids, of the National 
Guards, and the big drum-major. Looking to these troops 
(the fat Nationals were shuffling into line again) the two Com- 
mandants uttered, as nearly as I could catch them, the follow- 
ing words — 

" Hakrum Hu3ip!" 



310 THE SECOND FUNERAL 



s' 



At once all the National bayonets were on the present, and 
the sabres of the old Invalids np. The big drum-major looked 
round at the children, who be^an verv slowlv and solemnly 
on their drums, Rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — (count two be- 
tween each) — rub-dub-dub, and a great procession of priests 
came down from the altar. 

First, there was a tall handsome cross-bearer, bearing a long 
gold cross, of which the front was turned towards liis grace the 
Archbishop. Then came a double row of about sixteen in- 
cense-boys, dressed in white sui-plices : the first boy, about six 
3-ears old, the last with whiskers and of the height of a man. 
Then followed a regiment of priests in black tipj^ets and white 
gowns : they had black hoods, like the moon when she is at 
her third quarter, wherewith those who were bald (many wei-e, 
and fat too) covered themselves. All the reverend men held 
their heads meeklj' down, and affected to be reading in their 
breviaries. 

After the Priests came some Bishops of the neighboring 
districts, in purple, with crosses sparkling on their episcopal 
bosoms. 

Then came, after more priests, a set of men whom I have 
never seen before — a kind of ghosth' heralds, young and 
handsome men, some of them in stiff tabards of black and sil- 
ver, their eyes to the ground, their hands placed at right angles 
with their chests. 

Then came two gentlemen l)ea]'ing remarkable tall candle- 
sticks, with candles of corresponding size. One was burning 
brightly, but the wind (that chartei'ed libertiue) had blown out 
the other, which nevertheless ke[)t its i)lace in the procession — 
I wondered to myself whether the reverend gentlemau who car- 
ried the extino-uished candle, felt disiiusted, humiHated, morli- 
fied — perfectly conscious that the eyes of many thousands of 
people were bent upon that bit of refractory- wax. "We all of us 
looked at it with intense interest. 

Another cross-bearer, behind whom came a gentleman carrj*- 
ing an instrument like a bedroom candlestick. 

His Grandeur MonseigneurAffre, Archbishop of Paris : he 
was in black and white, his eyes were cast to the earth, his 
hands were together at right angles from his chest : on his 
hands were black gloves, and on the black gloves spaikled the 
sacred episcoi)al — what do I say? — archiei)iscopal ring. On 
his head was the mitre. It is unlike the godly coronet that 
figures upon the coach-'panels of our own Ixight Reverend 
Bench. The Archbishop's mitre may be about a yard high ; 



w 

OF NAPOLEON. 311 

formed within probably of consecrated pasteboard, it is without 
covered by a sort of watered silk of white and silver. On the 
two [)eaks at the top of the mitre are two very little spangled 
tassels, that frisk and twinkle about in a very agreeable 
manner. 

Monseigneur stood opposite to us for some time, when I had 
the opportunity to note the above remarkable phenomena. He 
stood opposite rue for some time, keeping his eyes steadily on 
the ground, his hands before him, a small clerical train follow- 
ing after. Why didn't they move? There was the National 
Guard keeping on presenting arms, the little drummers going 
on rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — in the same steady, slow 
way, and the Procession never moved an inch. There was 
evidently, to use an elegant phrase, a hitch somewhere. 

\^Enter a fat priest who bustles up to the drum-major.'^ 
Fat priest — '' Taisez-vous." 

Little drummer — Rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub, 
&c. 

Drum-major — '' Qu'est-ce done? " 

i^at priest — " Taisez-vous, dis-je ; ce n'est pas le corps. II 
n'arrivera pas — pour une heure." 

The little drums were instantly hushed, the procession turned 

to the right-about, and walked back to the altar again, the 

blown-out candle that had been on the near side of us before 

was now on the off side, the National Guards set down their 

muskets and began at their sandwiches again. AVe had to 

^wait an hour and a half at least before the great procession 

irrived. The guns without went on booming all the while at 

intervals, and as we heard each, the audience gave a kind 

)f "-ahahah!" such as you hear when the rockets go up at 

"^auxhall. 

At last the real Procession came. 

Tiien the drums began to beat as formerly, the Nationals to 
jet under arms, the clergymen were sent for and went, and 
jresently — yes, there was the tall cross-bearer at the head of 
the procession, and they came back! 

They chanted something in a weak, snuffling, lugubrious 
manner, to the melancholy bray of a serpent. 

Crash ! however, Mr. Habeneck and the fiddlers in the organ- 
loft pealed out a wild shrill march, which stopped the reverend 
gentleinen, and in the midst of this music — 

And of a irreat trampling of feet and clattering, 
And of a^ great crowd of Generals and Officers la fine 
clothes. 



112 



THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 



With the Pruice de Joiiiville marching quicldy at the head 
of the procession, 

And while ever3'bod3''s heart was thumping as hard as 
possible, 

Napoleon's coffin passed. 

It was done in an instant. A box covered with a great 
red cross — a dingy-looking crown lying on the top of it — 
Seamen on one side and Invalids on the other — the}' had 
passed in an instant and were np the aisle. 

A faint snuffling sound, as before, was heard from the offi- 
ciating priests, but we knew of nothing more. It is said that 
old Louis PhiHppe was standing at the catafalque, whither the 
Prince de Joinville advanced and said, " Sire, I bring you the 
body of the Emperor Napoleon." 

Louis Philippe answered, "I receive it in the name of 
P'rance." Beitrand put on the body the most glorious victori- 
ous sword that ever has been forged since the apt descendants 
of the first murderer learned how to hammer steel ; and the 
coffin was placed in the temple prepared for it. 

The six hundred singers and the fiddlers now commenced 
the playing and singing of a piece of music ; and a part of the 
crew of the ""Belle Poule " skipped into the places that had 
been kept for them under us, and listened to the music, chew- 
ing tobacco. While the actors and fiddlers were going on, 
most of the spirits-of-wine lamps on altars went out. 

When we arrived in the open air we passed through the' 
court of the Invalids, where thousands of people had been 
assembled, but where the benches were now quite bare. Then 
we came on to the terrace before the place : the old soldiers 
w^ere firing off the great guns, which made a dreadful stunning 
noise, and frightened some of us. who did not care to pass 
before tlie cannon and be knocked down even by the wadding. 
The guns were fired in honor of the King, who was going home 
b}^ a back door. All the foity thousand people who covered 
the great stands l)efore the Hotel had gone away too. ,Tiie 
Imperial Barge had been dragged up the river, and was lying 
lonely along the Qua}', examined b}' some few shivering people 
on the shore. 

It was five o'clock when we reached home : the stars were 
shining keenly out of the frosty sk}', and Francois told me that 
dinner was jnst ready. 

In this manner, my dear Miss Smith, the great Napoleou 
was buried. 

Farewell. "'-^ 



CEITICAL REVIEWS. 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.* 

Accusations of ingratitude, and just accusations no doubt, 
are made against every inhabitant of tliis wicked world, and 
the fact is, that a man who is ceaselessly engaged in its trouble 
and turmoil, borne hither and thither upon the fierce waves of 
the crowd, bustling, shifting, struggling to keep himself some- 
what above water — fighting for reputation, or more likely for 
bread, and ceaselessly occupied to-day with plans for appeasing 
the eternal appetite of inevitable hunger to-morrow — a man in 
such straits has hardl}' time to think of anything but himself, 
and, as in a sinking ship, must make his own rush for the 
boats, and fight, struggle, and trample for safety. In the 
midst of such a combat as this, the "ingenious arts, which 
prevent the ferocity of the manners, and act upon them as 
an emollient" (as the philosophic bard remarks in the Latin 
Grammar) are likely to be jostled to death, and then forgotten. 
The world will allow no such compromises between it and that 
which does not belong to it — no two gods must we serve ; but 
(as one has seen in some old portraits) the horrible glazed eyes 
of Necessity are always fixed upon you ; fly away as 3'ou will, 
black Care sits behind you, and with his ceaseless gloomy 
croaking drowns the voice of all more cheeiful companions. 
Happy he whose fortune has placed him where there is calm 
and plenty, and who ^as the wisdom not to give up his quiet 
in quest of visionary gain. 

Here is, no doiibt, the reason why a man, after the period 
of his boyhood, or first youth, makes so few friends. Want 
and ambition (new acquaintances which are introduced to him 
along with his beard) thrust away all other society from him. 

* Keprinted from the Westminster Revieiv for June, 1840. (No 66.) 



316 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



Some old friends remain, it is true, but these are become as a 
habit — a part of 3"our selfishness ; and, for new ones, they are 
selfish as you are. Neither member of the new partnership has 
the capital of affection and kindlj^ feeling, or can even afford 
the time that is requisite for the establishment of the new firm. 
Damp and chill the shades of the prison-house begin to close 
round us, and that "vision splendid" which has accompanied 
our steps in our journey dail}' farther from the east, fades away 
and dies into the light of common da}'. 

And what a common da}- ! what a foggy, dull, shivering 
apology for light is this kind of muddy twilight through which 
we are about to tramp and flounder for the rest of our existence, 
wandering farther and farther from the beauty and freshness 
and from the kindly gushing springs of clear gladness that 
made all around us green in our youth ! One wanders and 
gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a 
storm of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to 
rise — to mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink a 
stone to the bottom. 

The reader who has seen the name aflEixed to the head of 
this article scarcely- expected to be entertained with a declama- 
tion upon ingratitude, 3'outh, and the vanit}' of human pursuits, 
which ma}' seem at first sight to have little to do with the sub- 
ject in hand. But (although we reserve the privilege of dis- 
coursing upon whatever subject shall suit us, and by no means 
admit the public has any right to ask in our sentences for any 
meaning, or any connection whatever) it happens that, in this 
particular instance, there is an undoubted connection. ' In 
Susan's case, as recorded by Wordsworth, what connection 
had the corner of Wood Street with a mountain ascending, a 
vision of trees, and a nest by the Dove? Why should the song 
of a thrush cause bright volumes of vapor to glide through 
Lothbury, and a river to flow on through the vale of Cheapside ? 
As she stood at that corner of W^ood Street, a mop and a pail 
in her hand most likely, she heard the bird singing, and straight- 
way began pining and yearning for the days of her youth, for- 
getting the proper business of the pail and mop. Even so we 
are moved by the sight of some of Mr.«/Ci-uikshank's works — 
the " Busen fiihlt siclijugendlich erschiittert," the " schwankende 
Gestalten " of youth flit before one again, — Cruikshank's thrush 
begins to pipe and carol, as in the days of boyhood ; hence 
misty moralities, reflections, and sad and pleasant remembrances 
arise. He is the friend of the young especially. Have we not 
read all the story-books that his wonderful pencil has illusti-ated ? 



n 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 317 

Did we not forego tarts, in order to bii}' his " Breaking-up," or 
his " Fashionable Monstrosities" of the 3'ear eighteen hundred 
and something? Have we not before us, at this very moment, 
a print, — one of the admirable " Illustrations of Phrenology" 
— which entire work was purchased by a joint-stock company 
of bo3's, each drawing lots afterwards for the separate prints, 
and taking his choice in rotation? The writer of this, too, had 
the honor of drawing the first lot, and seized innnediately upon 
" Philoprogenitiveness " — a marvellous print (our cop}- is not 
at all improved b}' being colored, which operation we performed 
on it ourselves) — a marvellous print, indeed, — full of inge- 
nuity and fine jovial humor. A father, possessor of an enor- 
mous nose and family, is surrounded b}" the latter, who are, 
some of them, embracing the former. The composition writhes 
and twists about like the Kermes of Rubens. No less than 
seven little men and women in nightcaps, in frocks, in bibs, in 
breeches, are clambering about the head, knees, and arms of 
the man with the nose ; their noses;, too, are preternaturall}^ 
developed — the twins in the cradle have noses of the most 
considerable kind. The second daughter, who is watching 
them ; the j^oungest but two, who sits squalling in a certain 
wicker chair ; the eldest son, who is yawning ; the eldest 
daughter, who is preparing with the gravj' of two mutton-chops 
a savory dish of Yorkshire pudding for eighteen persons ; the 
3'ouths who are examining her operations (one a literary gentle- 
man, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just 
had his finger in the pudding) ; the genius who is at work on 
the slate, and the two honest lads who are hugging the good- 
humored washerwoman, their mother, — all, all, save this 
worth}' woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome 
certainly are they, and yet everjbod}^ must be charmed with 
the picture. It is full of grotesque beaut}'. The artist has at 
the back of his own skull, we are certain, a huge bump of philo- 
l^rogenitiveness. He loves children in his heart ; every one of 
those he has drawn is perfectl}' happ}-, and jovial, and affec- 
tionate, and innocent as possible. He makes them with large 
noses, but he loves them, and 3'ou always find something kind 
in the midst of his humor, and the ugliness redeemed b}' a SI3' 
touch of beaut3'. The smiling mother reconciles one with all 
the hideous family : the3' have all something of the mother in 
them — something kind, and generous, and tender. 

Knight's, in Sweeting's Alley ; Fairburn's, in a court off 
Ludgate Hill; Hone's, in Fleet Street — bright, enchanted 
palaces, which George Cruikshank used to people with grin- 



318 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

ning, fantastical imps, and meny, harmless sprites, — where 
are the}'? Fairburn's shop knows him no more ; not only has 
Knight disappeared from Sweeting's Allej", but, as we are given 
to understand, Sweeting's Alley has disappeared from the face 
of the globe. Slop, the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted 
Caroline (in a tight pelisse, with feathers in her head), the 
''Dandy of sixtj',' who used to glance at us from Hone's 
friendly whidows — where are the}'? Mr. Cruikshank ma}' 
have drawn a thousand better things since the days when these 
were ; but they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than 
anything else he has done. How we used to believe in them ! 
to stray miles out of the way on holidays, in order to ponder 
for an hour before that delightful window in Sweeting's Alley ! 
in walks through Fleet Street, to vanish abruptly down Fair- 
burn's passage, anc] there make one at his " charming gratis " 
exhibition. There used to be a crowd round the window in 
those days, of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt 
the songs, and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, 
and who received the points of humor with a general sympa- 
thizing roar. Where are these people now ? You never hear 
any laughing at HB. ; his pictures are a great deal too genteel 
for that — polite points of wit, which strike one as exceedingly 
clever and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet, gentleman- 
like kind of way. 

There must be no smiling with Cruikshank. A man who 
does not laugh outright is a dullard, and has no heart ; even 
the old dandy of sixty must have laughed at his own wondrous 
grotesque image, as they say Louis Philippe did, who saw all 
the caricatures that were made of himself. And there are 
some of Cruikshank's desiarns which have the blessed facultv of 
creating laughter as often as you see them. As Diggory says 
in the play, who is bidden by his master not to laugh while 
waiting at table — " Don't tell the story of Grouse in the Gun- 
room, master, or I can't help laughing." Repeat that history 
ever so often, and at the proper moment, honest Diggory is 
sure to explode. Every man, no doubt, who loves Cruikshank 
has his "Grouse in the Gun-room." There is a fellow in the 
"Points of Humor" who is offering to eat up a certain little 
general, that has made us happy any time these sixteen years : 
his huge mouth is a perpetual well of laughter — buckets full 
of fun can be drawn from it. We have formed no such friend- 
ships as that boyish one of the man with the mouth. But 
though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some 
eighteen years since, it must not be imagined that such is really 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 319 

the case. Eighteen sets of children have since then learned to 
love and admire him, and ma}' many more of their successors 
be brought up in the same delightful faith. It is not the artist 
who fails, but the men who grow cold — the men, from whom 
the illusions (why illusions ? realities) of youth disappear one 
by one ; who have no leisure to be happ}', no blessed holidays, 
but onl}' fresh cares at Midsummer and Christmas, being the 
inevitable seasons which bring us bills instead of pleasures. 
Tom, who comes bounding home from school, has the doctor's 
account in his trunk, and his father goes to sleep at the panto- 
mime to which he takes him. Pater infelix^ 3'ou too have 
laughed at clown, and the magic wand of spangled harlequin ; 
what delightful enchantment did it wave around you, in the 
golden days "when George the Third was king!" But our 
clown lies in his grave ; and our harlequin, Ellar, prince of 
how many enchanted islands, was he not at Bow Street the 
other day,* in his dirt}', tattered, faded motle}^ — seized as a 
law-breaker, for acting at a penny theatre, after having well- 
nigh starved in the streets, where nobody would listen to his 
old guitar ? No one gave a shilling to bless him : not one of 
us who owe him so much. 

We know not if Mr. Cruikshank will be very well pleased at 
finding his name in such company as that of Clown and Harle- 
quin ; but he, like them, is certainly the children's friend. His 
drawings abound in feeling for these Kttle ones, and hideous as 
in the course of his duty he is from time to time compelled to 
design them, he never sketches one without a certain pity for it, 
and imparting to the figure a certain grotesque grace. In happy 
schoolboys he revels ; plum-pudding and hoHdays his needle 
has engraved over and over again ; there is a design in one of 
the comic almanacs of some young gentlemen who are employed 
in administering to a schoolfellow the correction of the pump, 
which is as graceful and elegant as a drawing of Stothard. Dull 
books about children George Cruikshank makes bright with ilhis- 
trations — there is one published by the ingenious and opulent 
Mr. Tegg. It is entitled "Mirth and Morality," the mirth 
being, for the most part, on the side of the designer — the 
morality, unexceptionable certainly, the author's capital. Here 
are then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied 
by George Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunt- 
ing across a common ! Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like 
drawing was never made upon such a theme. Who, cries the 
author — 

* This was written in 1840. 



320 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

" Who lias not chased the butterfly, 

And crushed its slender legs and wings, 
And heaved a moralizing sigh : 

Alas ! how frail are human things ! " 

A ver}^ unexceptionable morality' truly ; but it would have puz- 
zled another than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of it 
as he has done. Away, surely not on the wino-s of these verses, 
Cruikshank's imagination begins to soar ; and he makes us three 
darling little men on a green common, backed bj' old farm- 
houses, somewhere about May. A great mixture of blue and 
clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring, Tom's jacket 
flapping in the same, in order to bring down the insect queen 
or king of spring that is fluttering above him, — he renders all 
this with a few strokes on a little block of wood not two inches 
square, upon w^hich one ma}' gaze for hours, so merry and life- 
like a scene does it present. IVhat a charming creative power 
is this, what a privilege — to be a god, and create little worlds 
upon paper, and wdiole generations of smiling, jovial men, 
women, and children half inch high, whose portraits are car- 
ried abroad, and have the facult}' of making us monsters of six 
feet curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine 
that an artist could make an3-thing of such a subject as this ? 
The writer begins by stating, — 

" I love to go back to the days of my youth, 
And to reckon my joys to the letter. 
And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world, 
Aif, and those who are gone to a better." 

This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. " Of all 
the men I have ever known," says he, "my uncle united the 
greatest degree of cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. 
Though a man w4ien I was a bo}^ he w^as yet one of the most 
agreeable companions I ever possessed. ... He embarked for 
America, and nearly twenty years passed hj before he came 
back again ; . . . but oh, how altered ! — he was in every 
sense of the word an old man, his body and mind w^ere 
enfeebled, and second childishness had come upon him. How 
often have I bent over him, vainly endeavoring to recall to his 
memory the scenes w^e had shared together : and how frequently', 
with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and lustreless 
e3'e, while he has amused himself in clapping his hands and 
singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm." Alas ! 
such are the consequences of long residences in America, and of 
old age even in uncles ! Well, the point of this morality is, that 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 321 

the uncle one da}' in the morning of Hfe vowed that he would 
catch his two nephews and tie them together, ay, and actuallj- 
did so, for all the efforts the rogues made to run awa}' from him ; 
but he was so fatigued that he declared he never would make 
the attempt again, whereupon the nephew remarks, — "-Often 
since then, when engaged in enterprises be3'ond my strength, 
have I called to mind the determination of my uncle." 

Does it not seem impossible to make a picture out of this? 
And yet George Cruikshank has produced a charming design, 
in which the uncles and nephews are so prettil}' portraj-ed that 
one is reconciled to their existence, with all their moralities. 
Man}^ more of the mirths in this little book are excellent, es- 
pecially a great figure of a parson entering church on horseback, 
— an enormous parson truh', calm, unconscious, unwield}'. As 
Zeuxis had a bevy of virgins in order to make his famous 
picture — his express virgin — a clerical host must have passed 
under Cruikshank' s eyes before he sketched this little, enormous 
parson of parsons. 

Being on the subject of children's books, how shall we enough 
praise the delightful German nurser3'-tales, and Cruikshank's 
illustrations of them ? We coupled his name with pantomime 
awhile since, and sure never pantomimes were more charming 
than these. Of all the artists that ever drew, from Michael 
Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the man to 
illustrate these tales, and give them just the proper admixture 
of the grotesque, the wonderful, and the graceful. May all 
Mother Bunch's collection be similarly indebted to him ; may 
" Jack the Giant Killer," maj^ " Tom Thumb," may " Puss in 
Boots," be one da}^ revivified b}' his pencil. Is not Whitting- 
ton sitting 3'et on Highgate Hill, and poor Cinderella (in that 
sweetest of all fairy stories) still pining in lier lonel}- chiranc}'- 
nook ? A man who has a true affection for these delightful com- 
panions of his 3'outh is bound to be grateful to them if he can, 
and we pra}- Mr. Cruikshank to remember them. 

It is foil}' to say that this or that kind of humor is too good 
for the pubhc, that onh' a chosen few can relish it. The best 
humor that we know of has been as eagerly received by the 
public as by the most delicate connoisseur. There is hardly a 
man in England who can read but will laugh at Falstalf and 
the humor of Joseph Andrews ; and honest Mr. Pickwick's 
story can be felt and loved by any person above the age of six. 
Some ma}^ have a keener enjoyment of it than others, but all 
the world can be merry over it, and is always read}- to welcome 
it. The best criterion of good humor is success, and what a 

21 



322 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

share of this has Mr. Cruikshank had ! how many millions of 
mortals has he made happy ! We have heard ver}- profound 
persons talk philosophically of the marvellous and mysterious 
manner in which he has suited himself to the time — fait vibrer 
la jibre populaire (as Napoleon boasted of himself), supplied a 
peculiar want felt at a peculiar period, the simple secret of 
which is, as we take it, that he, living amongst the public, has 
with them a general wide-hearted sympath}', that he laughs at 
what they laugh at, that he has a kindly spirit of enjoyment, 
with not a morsel of mj'sticism in his composition ; that he 
pities and loves the poor, and jokes at the follies of the great, 
and that he addresses all in a perfectlj' sincere and manl}' waj'. 
To be greatl}' successful as a professional humorist, as in an}- 
other calling, a man must be quite honest, and show that his 
heart is in his work. A bad preacher will get admiration and 
a hearing with this point in his favor, where a man of three 
times his acquirements will onh' find indifference and coldness. 
Is any man more remarkable' than our artist for telling the truth 
after his own manner ? Hogarth's honestj' of purpose was as 
conspicuous in an earlier time, and we fancy that Gilray would 
have been far more successful and more powerful but for that 
unhapp}^ bribe, which turned the whole course of his humor into 
an unnatural channel. Cruikshank would not for any bribe say 
what he did not think, or lend his aid to sneer down anything 
meritorious, or to praise any thing or person that deserved 
censure. When he levelled his wit against the Regent, and 
did his very prettiest for the Princess, he most certainly be- 
lieved, along with the great body of the people whom he repre- 
sents, that the Princess was the most spotless, pure-mannered 
darling of a Princess that ever married a heartless debauchee 
of a Prince Royal. Did not millions believe with him, and 
noble and learned lords take their oaths to her Royal High- 
ness's innocence? Cruikshank would not stand by and see a 
woman ill-used, and so struck in for her rescue, he and the 
people belaboring with all their might the party who were 
making the attack, and determining, from pure sympathy and 
indi2:nation, that the woman must be innocent because her hus- 
band treated her so foully. 

To be sure we have never heard so much from Mr. Cruik- 
shank's own lips, but any man who will examine these odd 
drawings, which first made him famous, will see what an honest 
heart}' hatred the champion of woman has for all who abuse 
her, and will admire the energy with which he flings his wood- 
blocks at all who side against her. Canning, Castlereagh, 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 323 

• 
Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all ; and as for the 
Prince, up to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he tie that 
unfortunate old man ! And do not let squeamish Tories or}' 
out about dislo3'alty ; if the crown does wrong, the crown must 
be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of course, for the 
crown. In those da3s, and by those people who so bitterly 
attacked the son, no word was ever breathed against the father, 
simpl}' because he was a good husband, and a sober, thrifty, 
pious, orderly man. 

This attack upon the Prince Regent we believe to have been 
Mr. Cruikshank's onl}' effort as a part3' politician. Some early 
manifestoes against Napoleon we find, it is true, done in the 
regular John Bull style, with the Gilray model for the little 
upstart Corsican : but as soon as the Emperor had yielded to 
stern fortune our artist's heart relented (as Beranger's did on 
the other side of the water), and many of our readers will 
doubtless recollect a fine drawing of " Louis XVIII. trjing on 
Napoleon's boots," which did not certainl}^ fit the gouty son of 
Saint Louis. Such satirical hits as these, however, must not 
be considered as political, or as an} thing more than the expres- 
sion of the artist's national British idea of Frenchmen. 

It must be confessed that for that great nation Mr. Cruik- 
shank entertains a considerable contempt. • Let the reader 
examine the "Life in Paris," or the five hundred designs in 
which Frenchmen are introduced, and he will find them almost 
invariabl}' thin, with ludicrous spindle-shanks, pigtails, out- 
stretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and queer hair and 
mustachios. He has the British idea of a Frenchman ; and 
if he does not believe that the inhabitants of France are for 
the most part dancing-masters and barbers, 3'et takes care to 
depict such in preference, and would not speak too well of 
them. It is curious how these traditions endure. In France, 
at the present moment, the Englishman on the stage is the 
caricatured Englishman at the time of the war, with a shock red 
head, a long white coat, and invariable gaiters. Those who 
wish to study this subject should peruse Monsieur Paul de 
Kock's histories of "Lord Boulingrog" and " Lady Crockmi- 
love." On the other hand, the old emigre has taken his station 
amongst us, and we doubt if a good British gallery would 
understand that such and such a character was a Frenchman 
unless he appeared in the ancient traditional costume. 

A curious book, called " Life in Paris," published in 1822, 
contains a number of the artist's plates in the aquatint style ; 
and though we believe he had never been in that capital, the 



324 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

designs have a great deal of life in them, and pass muster very- 
well. A villanous race of shoulder-shrugging mortals are his 
Frenchmen indeed. And the heroes of the tale, a certain Mr. 
Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, are 
made to show the true British superiority on every occasion 
when Britons and French are brought together. This book was 
one among the many that the designer's genius has caused to 
be popular; the plates are not carefully executed, but, being 
colored, have a pleasant, lively look. The same style was 
adopted in the once famous book called "Tom and Jerry, or 
Life in London," which must have a word of notice here, for, 
although by no means Mr. Cruikshank's best work, his reputa- 
tion was extraordinarily raised b}' it. Tom and Jerry were as 
popular twenty years since as Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller 
now are ; and often have we wished, while reading the biog- 
raphies of the latter celebrated personages, that they had 
been described as well by Mr. Cruikshank's pencil as by Mr. 
Dickens's pen. 

As for Tom and Jerry, to show the mutabiht}^ of human 
affairs and the evanescent nature of reputation, we have been 
to the British Museum and no less than five circulating libraries 
in quest of the book, and '^ Life in London," alas, is not to be 
found at an}' on^ of them. We can only, therefore, speak of 
the work fi'om recollection, but have still a very clear remem- 
brance of the leather gaiters of Jerry Hawthorn, the green 
spectacles of Logic, and the hooked nose of Corinthian Tom. 
They were the schoolboy's delight ; and in the days when the 
work appeared we firmly believed the three heroes above named 
to be types of the most elegant, fashionable young fellows the 
town afforded, and thought their occupations and amusements 
were those of all high-bred English gentlemen. Tom knocking 
down the watchman at Temple Bar ; Tom and Jerry dancing at 
Almack's ; or flirting in the saloon at the theatre ; at the uight- 
houses, after the play ; at Tom Cribb's, exiamining the silver 
cup then in the possession of that champion ; at the chambers 
of Bob Logic, who, seated at a cabinet piano, plays a waltz to 
which Corinthian Tom and Kate are dancing ; ambling gallantly 
in Rotten Row ; or examining the poor fellow at Newgate who 
was having his chains knocked off before hanging: all these 
scenes remain indelibly engraved upon the mind, and so far we 
are independent of all the circulating hbraries in London. 

As to the literary contents of the book, the}' have passed 
sheer away. It was, most likely, not particularly refined ; nay, 
the chances are that it was absolutely vulgar. But it must 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 325 

have had some merit of its own, that is clear ; it must have 
given striking descriptions of life in some part or other of 
London, for all London read it, and went to see it in its dra- 
matic shape. The artist, it is said, wished to close the career 
of the three heroes by bringing them all to ruin, but the writer, 
or publishers,' would not allow any such melancholy subjects to 
dash the merriment of the public, and we believe Tom, Jerrj^, 
and Logic, were married off at the end of the tale, as if they 
had been the most moral personages in the world. There is 
some goodness in this pit}', which authors and the public are 
disposed to show towards certain agreeable, disreputable char- 
acters of romance. Who would mar the prospects of honest 
Roderick Random, or Charles Surface, or Tom Jones? only a 
ver}' stern moralist indeed. And in regard of Jerry Hawthorn 
and that hero without a surname, Corinthian Tom, Mr. Cruik- 
shank, we make little doubt, was glad in his heart that he was 
not allowed to have his own way. 

Soon after the " Tom and Jerry " and the " Life in Paris," 
Mr. Cruikshank produced a much more elaborate set of prints, 
in a work which was called " Points of Humor." These 
" Points " were selected from various comic works, and did not, 
we believe, extend beyond a couple of numbers, containing 
about a score of copper-plates. The collector of humorous 
designs cannot fail to have them in his portfolio, for they con- 
tain some of the very best efforts of Mr. Cruikshank' s, genius, 
and though not quite so highly labored as some of his later 
productions, are none the worse, in our opinion, for their com- 
parative want of finish. All the effects are perfectl}" given, and 
the expression is as good as it could be in the most delicate 
engraving upon steel. The artist's style, too, was then com- 
pletely formed ; and, for our parts, we should saj^ that we 
preferred his manner of 1825 to any other which he has adopted 
since. The first picture, which is called " The Point of Honor," 
illustrates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of 
cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother 
oflScers and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before 
which his comrades fled ignominiousl3\ This design is capital, 
and the outward rush of heroes, walking, tramphng, twisting, 
* ticuflaing at the door, is in the best style of the grotesque. You 
eee but the back of most of these gentlemen ; into which, 
nevertheless, the artist has managed to throw an expression of 
ludicrous agony that one could scarcely have expected to find 
in such a part of the human figure. The next plate is not less 
good. It represents a couple who, having been found one night 



326 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

tipsy, and lying in the same gutter, were, by a charitable though 
misguided gentleman, supposed to be man and wife, and i)ut 
coHifortablv to bed to2:ether. The mornina; came ; I'ancv the 
surprise of this interesting pair when they awoke and discovered 
their situation. Fane.y the maimer, too, in which Cruikshank 
his depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is 
niedlGss to state that tiiis fortuitous and temporary union was 
followed by one more lasting and sentimental, and that these 
two worth\- persons were married, and lived happily ever after. 

We should like to go through every one of these prints. 
There is the joih* miller, who, returning home at night, calls 
upon his wife to get him a su[)per, and falls to upon rashers of 
bacon and ale. How he gormandizes, that jolly miller ! rasher 
after rasher, how they pass awav frizzling and smoking from 
the gridiron down that immense grinning gulf of a mouth. Poor 
wife ! how she pines and frets, at that untimely hour of midnight 
to be obliged to fty, fry, fry perpetually, and minister to the 
monster's appetite. And yonder in the clock : what agonized 
face is that we see? By heavens, it is the squire of the parish. 
What business has he there ? Let us not ask. Suffice it to 
say, that he has, in the hurry of the moment, left up stairs his 
br ; his — psha ! a part of his dress, in short, with a num- 
ber of bank-notes in the pockets. Look in the next page, and 
3'ou will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a miller is 
actually causing this garment to be carried through the village 
and cried b}' the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to 
sa}^ that the demoralized miller never offered to return the bank- 
notes, although he was so might}^ scrupulous in endeavoring to 
find an owner for the corduro}^ portfolio in which he had found 
them. 

Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to 
state, to a series of prints representing personages not a whit 
more moral. Burns's famous "Jolly Beggars" have all had 
their portraits drawn b}^ Cruikshank. There is the lovel}" 
"hempen widow," quite as interesting and romantic as the 
famous Mrs. Sheppard, who has at the lamented demise of her 
husband adopted the very same consolation. 

" My curse upon them every one, 
They've hanged my braw John Highlandman ; 

• • • • • 

And now a widow I must mourn 
Departed joys that ne'er return ; 
No comfort but a hearty can 
When I think on John Highlandman." 



' 



Hi 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 327 

Sweet " raucle carlin," she has none of the sentimentality of 
the English highwayman's lady ; but being wooed by a tinker 
and 

" A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle 
Wha iis'd to trystes and fairs to driddle," 

prefers the practical to the merely musical man. The tinker 
sings with a noble candor, worthy of a fellow of his strength 
of bod}' and station in life — 

"My bonnie lass, I work in brass, 

A tinker is my station ; 
I've travell'd round all Cliristian ground 

In this my occupation. 
I've ta'en the gold, I've been enroll'd 

In many a noble squadron ; 
But vain they seareh'd when off I march'd 

To go an' clout tlie caudron." 

It was his ruhng passion. What was military glor}- to him, 
forsooth? He had the greatest contempt for iL and loved 
freedom and his copper kettle a thousand times better — a 
kind of hardware Diogenes. Of tiddling he has no better 
opinion. The picture represents the "sturdy caird" taking 
"poor gut-scraper" by the beard, — drawing his "• roosty ra- 
pier," and swearing to " speet him like a pliver " unless he 
* would relinquish the bonnie lassie for ever — 

" Wi' ghastly ee, poor tweedle-dee 
Upon his hunkers bended. 
An' pray'd for grace wi' ruefu' face, 
An' so the quarrel ended." 

Hark how the tinker apostrophizes the violinist, stating to the 
widow at the same time the advantages which she might ex- 
pect from an alliance with himself : — 

"Despise that shrimp, that withered imp, 
Wi' a' his noise and caperin' ; 
And take a share w'ith those that bear 
The budget and the apron ! 

"And by that stowp, my faith an* houpe, 
An' by that dear Kilbaigie ! 
If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant, 
May I ne'er weet my craigie." 

Cruikshank's caird is a noble creature ; his face and figure 
show him to be full}^ capable of doing and saying all that is 
above written of him. 



328 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

In the second part, the old tale of "The Three Hunch- 
backed Fiddlers " is illustrated with equal felicit}^ The famous 
classical dinners and duel in "Peregrine Pickle" are also ex- 
cellent in their wa}" ; and the connoisseur of prints and etchings 
maj" see in the latter plate, and in another in this volume, 
how great the artist's mechanical skill is as an etcher. The 
distant view of the cit}- in the duel, and of a market-place in 
"The Quack Doctor," are delightful specimens of the artist's 
skill in depicting buildings and backgrounds. They are touched 
with a grace, truth, and dexterit}' of workmanship that leave 
nothing to desire. We have before mentioned the man with 
the mouth, which appears in this number emblematical of gout 
and indigestion, in which the artist has shown all the fanc}' 
of Callot. Little demons, with long saws for noses, are making 
dreadful incisions into the toes of the unhapp}' sufferer ; some 
are bringing pans of hot coals to keep the wounded member 
warm ; a huge, solemn nightmare sits on the invalid's chest, 
staring solemnlj^ into his e3'es ; a monster, with a pair of drum- 
sticks, is banging a devil's tattoo on his forehead ; and a pair 
of imps are nailing great tenpenny nails into his hands to make 
his happiness complete. 

The late Mr. Clark's excellent work, "Three Courses and 
a Dessert," was published at a time when the rage for comic 
stories was not so great as it since has been, and Messrs. Clark 
and Cruikshank onlj' sold their hundreds where Messrs. Dick- 
ens and Phiz dispose of their thousands. But if our recom- 
mendation can in an}' way influence the reader, we would 
enjoin him to have a copy of the "Three Courses," that con- 
tains some of the best designs of our artist, and some of the 
most amusing tales in our language. The invention of the 
pictures, for which Mr. Clark takes credit to himself, says a 
great deal for his wit and fanc3\ Can we, for instance, praise 
too highly the man who invented that wonderful 03'ster? 

Examine him well ; his beard, his pearl, his little round 
stomach, and his sweet smile. Onl}' oysters know how to 
smile in this wa}' ; cool, gentle, waggish, and yet inexpressibly 
innocent and winning. Dando himself must have allowed such 
an artless native to go free, and consigned him to the glassy, 
cool, ti'anslucent wave again. 

In writing upon such subjects as these with which we have 
been furnished, it can hardly be expected that we should follow 
any fixed plan and order — we must therefore take such 
advantage as we ma}^ and seize upon our subject when and 
wherever we can lay hold of him. 




CRITICAL REVIEWS. 329 

For Jews, sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, bea- 
dles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, 
dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and 
ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and won- 
derfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predilec- 
tion. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazino- 
gusto ; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," 
and the immortal Fagin of '' Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies 
the comic vis in these persons and things? Why should a 
beadle be comic, and his opposite a charity boy ? Wh}- should 
a tall life-guardsman have something in him essentiallj' absurd? 
Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long? What is 
there particular!}' jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a 
long nose always proA^oke the beholder to laughter? These 
points ma}^ be metaphysicall}' elucidated by those who list. 
It is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate 
definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his 
instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be 
the heart that can pass b}' the pantaloons of his charit}' boA's, 
the Hessian boots of his dandies, and the fan-tail hats of his 
dustmen, without respectful wonder. 

He has made a complete little gallerj- of dustmen. There 
is, in the first place, the professional dustman, who, having in 
the enthusiastic exercise of his delightful trade, laid hands upon 
property not strictly his own, is pursued, we presume, by the 
right owner, from whom he flies as fast as his crooked shanks 
will carry him. 

What a curious picture it is — the horrid rickety houses 
in some ding}' suburb of London, the grinning cobbler, the 
smothered butcher, the ver}' trees which are covered with dust 
— it is fine to look at the different expressions of the two 
interesting fugitives. The fierj' charioteer who belabors the 
poor donke}' has still a glance for his brother on foot, on whom 
punishment is about to descend. And not a little curious is it 
to think of the creative power of the man who has an-anged 
this little tale of low life. How logically it is conducted, how 
cleverly each one of the accessories is made to contribute to 
the effect of the whole. What a deal of thought and humor 
has the artist expended on this little block of wood ; a large 
picture might have been painted out of the very same materials, 
which Mr. Cruikshank, out of his wondrous fund of merriment 
and observation, can afford to throw aAva}' upon a drawing 
not two inches long. From the practical dustmen we pass 
to those purel}' poetical. There are three of them who rise 



iA 



330 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

on clouds of their own raising, the very genii of the sack and 
shovel. 

Is there no one to write a sonnet to these ? — and 3'et a 
whole poem was written about Peter Bell the wagoner, a char- 
acter b}' no means so poetic. 

And lastly, we have the dustman in love : the honest fellow 
having seen a young beauty stepping out of a gin-shop on a 
Sundaj' morning, is pressing eagerly- his suit. 

Gin has furnished many subjects to Mr. Crulkshank, who 
labors in his own sound and hearty way to teach his countiy- 
men the dangers of that drink. In the ""Sketch-Book" is a 
plate upon the subject, remarkable for fancy and beauty of 
design; it is called the "Gin Juggernaut," and represents a 
hideous moving palace, with a recking still at the roof and 
vast gin-barrels for wlieels, under which unhappy millions arc 
crushed to death. An immense black cloud of desolation 
covers over the country through which the gin monster "lias 
passed, dimly looming through the darkness whereof you see 
an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men dangling, burnt 
houses, &c. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the wake 
of this horrible bodN-crusher ; and you see, by way of contrast, 
a distant, smiling, sunshiu}' tract of old P>nglish countr_y, where 
gin as yet is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, 
and as fanciful as one of John Bunyan's, and we have often 
fancred there was a similarity between the men. 

The reader will examine the work called '" My Sketch-Book " 
with not a little amusement, and mav gather from it, as we 
fancy, a good deal of information regarding the character of the 
individual man, George Cruikshank : what points strike his eye 
as a painter ; what move his anger or admiration as a moralist ; 
what classes he seems most especially disposed to observe, and 
wliat to ridicule. There are quacks of all kinds, to whom he 
has a mortal hatred ; quack dandies, who assume under his 
pencil, perhaps in liis eye, the most grotesque appearance pos- 
sible — their hats grow larger, their legs infinitely more crooked 
and lean ; the tassels of their canes swell out to a most pre- 
posterous size ; the tails of their coats dwindle awaN', and finish 
where coat-tails generally begin^ Let us la}' a wager that 
Cruikshank, a man of the people if ever there w^as one, heartil}^ 
hates and despises these supercilious, swaggering young gentle- 
men ; and his contempt is not a whit the less laudable because 
there may be tant soit peu. of prejudice in it. It is right and 
wholesome to scorn dandies, as Nelson said it was to hate 
Frenchmen ; iu which sentiment (as we have before said) 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



331 



George Cruiksliank iincloubtedly shares. In the " Sunday in 
London."* Monsieur the Clief is instrueting a kitchen-maid 
how to compound some rascally Frcncli kicksliaw or the other 
— a pretty scoundrel truly ! with what an air he wears that 
nightcap of his, and shrugs his lank shoulders, and chatters, 
and ogles, and grius : they are all the same, these mounseers ; 
there are other two fellows — utorblea! one is putting his dirty 
fingers into the saucepan ; there are frogs cooking in it, no 
doubt ; and just over some other dish of abomination, another 
dirty rascal is taking snulf ! Never mind, the sauce won't bG 
hurt by a lew ingredients more or less. Three such fellows as 
these are not worth one Englishman, that's clear. There is one 
in the very midst of them, the great burly fellow with the beef: 
he could beat all three in five minutes. We cannot be certain 
that such was the process going on in Mr. Cruikshank's mind 
when he made the design ; but some feelings of the sort were 
no doubt entertained b}' him. 

Against dand}- footmen he is particularly severe. He bates 
idlers, pretenders, boasters, and punishes these fellows as best 
he may. Who does not recollect the famous picture, " What 
is Taxes, Thomas?" What is taxes indeed; well ma}' that 
vast, over-fed, lounging flunky ask the question of his associate 
Thomas : and 3'et not well, for all that Thomas says in repl}' 
is, "/ donH know." " O beati plushicolce^'" what a charming 

* The following lines — ^ever fresh — by the author of "Headlong 
Hall," pubhshed years ago in the Globe and Traveller, are an excellent 
comment on several of the cuts from the " Sunday in London : " — 



I. 



" The poor man's sius are glaring ; 
In the face of ghostly warning 

He is caught in tlie fact 

Of an overt act, 
Buying greens on Sunday morning. 



II. 



" The rich man's sins are hidden 
In the pomp of wealth and station, 

And escape the sight 

Of the children of light, 
Who are wise in their generation. 



III. 



" The rich man has a kitchen, 
And cooks to dress his dinner ; 
The poor who would roast. 
To the baker's must post, 

And thus becomes a sinner. 



IV. 



•'The rich man's painted windows 
Hide the concerts of the quality ; 
The poor can but share 
A crack'd fiddle in the air. 
Which offends all sound morality. 



v. 



"The rich man has a cellar, 
And a ready butler by him ; 
The poor must steer 
For his pint of beer 



[him. 



Where the saint can't choose but spy 



VI. 



*' The rich man is invisible 
In the crowd of his gay society ; 
But the poor man's delight 
Is a sore in the sight 
And a stench in the nose of piety." 



832 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

state of ignorance is yours ! In the ' ' Sketch-Book " manj 
footmen make their appearance : one is a huge fat Hercules of 
a Portman Square porter, who cahuh' surve3's another poor 
fellow, a porter likewise, but out of liver}-, w^ho comes stagger- 
ing forward with a box that Hercules might lift with his little 
finger. Will Hercules do so? not he. The giant can cany 
nothing heavier than a cocked-hat note on a silver tra^', and 
his labors are to walk from his sentrj'-box to the door, and from 
the door back to his sentrj-box, and to read the Sunda}' paper, 
and to poke the hall fire twice or thrice, and to make five meals 
a day. Such a fellow does Cruikshank hate and scorn worse 
even than a Frenchman. 

The man's master, too, comes in for no small share of our 
artist's wrath. There is a company of them at church, who 
humbl}' designate themselves ' ' miserable sinners ! " Miserable 
sinners indeed ! Oh, what floods of tnrtle-soup, what tons of 
turbot and lobster-sauce must have been sacrificed to make 
those sinners properl}- miserable. My lad}^ with the ermine 
tippet and draggling feather, can we not see that she lives in 
Portland Place, and is the wife of an East India Director? She 
has been to the Opera over-night (indeed her husband, on her 
right, with his fat hand dangling over the pew-door, is at this 
minute thinking of Mademoiselle Leocadie, whom he saw behind 
the scenes) — she has been at the Opera over-night, which with 
a trifle of supper afterwards — a white-and-brown soup, a 
lobster-salad, some woodcocks, and a little champagne — sent 
her to bed quite comfortable. At half-past eight her maid 
brings her chocolate in bed, at ten she has fresh eggs and 
muflQns, with, perhaps, a half-hundred of prawns for breakfast, 
and so can get over the day and the sermon till lunch-time 
pretty well. What an odor of musk and bergamot exhales 
from the pew ! — how it is wadded, and stuffed, and spangled 
over with brass nails ! what hassocks are there for those who 
are not too fat to kneel ! what a flustering and flapping of gilt 
prayer-books ; and what a pious whirring of bible leaves one 
hears all over the church, as the doctor blandly gives out the 
text ! To be miserable at this rate you must, at the very least, 
have four thousand a year : and many persons are there so 
enamored of grief and sin, that they would wilhngly take the 
risk of the misery to have a life-interest in the consols that 
accompau}^ it, quite careless about consequences, and sceptical 
as to the notion that a day is at hand when you must fulfil your 
share of the bargain. 

Our artist loves to joke at a soldier ; in whose livery there 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 3oo 

appears to him to be something ahnost as ridiculous as in the 
uniform of the gentleman of the shoulder-knot. Tall life- 
guardsmen and fierce grenadiers figure in many of his designs, 
and almost alwa^'S in a ridiculous yvay. Here again we have 
the honest popular English feeling which jeers at pomp or pre- 
tension of all kinds, and is especially jealous of all display- of 
military authorit}'. "Raw Recruit," "ditto dressed," ditto 
'' served up," as we see them in the " Sketch-Book," are so 
man}' satires upon the arm}" : Hodge with his ribbons flaunting 
in his hat, or with red coat and musket, drilled stiff and pom- 
pous, or at last, minus leg and arm, tottering about on crutches, 
does not fill our English artist with the enthusiasm that follows 
the soldier in every other part of Europe. Jeanjean, the con- 
script in France, is laughed at to be sure, but then it is because 
he is a bad soldier : when he comes to have a huge pair of 
mustachios and the croix-d^honneur to hriller on his poitrine cica- 
trisee, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is more re- 
spected than any other in the French nation. The veteran soldier 
inspires our people with no such awe — we hold that democratic 
weapon the fist in much more honor than the sabre and bayonet, 
and laugh at a man tricked out in scarlet and pipe-clay. 

That regiment of heroes is " marching to divine service," to 
the tune of the "British Grenadiers." There they march in 
state, and a pretty contempt our artist shows for all their gim- 
cracks and trumpery. He has drawn a perfectly English 
scene — the little blackguard boys are playing pranks round 
about the men, and shouting, " Heads up, soldier," "Eyes right, 
lobster," as little British urchins will do. Did one ever hear the 
like sentiments expressed in France? Shade of Napoleon, we 
insult 3'ou by asking the question. In England, however, see 
how different the case is : and designedl}^ or undesignedly, the 
artist has opened to us a piece of his mind. In the crowd the 
only person who admires the soldiers is the poor idiot, whose 
pocket a rogue is picking. There is another picture, in which 
the sentiment is much the same, only, as in the former drawing 
we see Englishmen laughing at the troops of the line, here are 
Irishmen giggling at the militia. 

We have said that our artist has a great love for the droll- 
eries of the Green Island. Would any one doubt what was the 
country of the merry fellows depicted in his group of Paddies ? 

" Place me amid O'Rourkes, O'Tooles, 
The ragged royal race of Tara ; 
Or place me where Dick Martin rules 
The pathless wilds of Connemara." 



334 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

We know not if Mr. Cruikshank has ever had an}' such good 
hick as to see the Irish in Ireland itself, but he certainly has 
obtained a knowledo'e of their looks, as if the country had been 
all his life familiar to him. Could Mr. O'Connell himself desire 
an3'thing more national than the scene of a drunken row, or 
could Father Mathew haye a better text to preach upon ? There 
is not a broken nose in the room that is not thoroughly 
Irish. 

We have then a couple of compositions treated in a graver 
manner, as characteristic too as the other. We call attention 
to the comical look of poor Teague, who has been pursued and 
beaten b}' the witch's stick, in order to point out also the sin- 
gular neatness of the workmanship, and the pretty, fanciful 
little glimpse of landscape that the artist has introduced in the 
background. Mr. Cruikshank has a line e3'e for such homely 
landscapes, and renders them with great delicac}^ and taste. 
Old villages, farm-3'ards, groups of stacks, queer chimneys, 
churches, gable-ended cottages, Elizabethan mansion-houses, 
and other old English scenes, he depicts with evident enthu- 
siasm. 

Famous books in their day were Cruikshank's "John 
Gilpin" and " Epping Hunt ; " for though our artist does not 
draw horses ver}' scientificalh', — to use a phrase of the atelier, 
— he feels them ver^^ keenly ; and his queer animals, after one 
is used to them, answer quite as well as better. Neither is he 
very happy in trees, and such rustical produce ; or, rather, 
we should sa}-, he is ver}' original, his trees being decidedly 
of his own make and composition, not imitated from any 
master. 

But what then? Can a man be supposed to imitate e^'^ery- 
thing? We know what the noblest study of mankind is, and 
to this Mr. Cruikshank has confined himself. That postilion 
with the people in the broken-down chaise roaring after him is as 
deaf as the post by which he passes. Suppose all the accesso- 
ries were awa}', could not one swear that the man was stone-deaf, 
be^^ond the reach of trumpet ? What is the peculiar character in 
a deaf man's phj^siognomy ? — can an}' person define it satisfac- 
torily in words ? — not in pages ; and Mr. Cruikshank has ex- 
pressed it on a piece of paper not so big as the tenth part of your 
thumb-nail. The horses of John Gilpin are much more of the 
equestrian order ; and as here the artist has only his favorite 
suburban buildings to draw, not a word is to be said against his 
design. The inn and old buildings are charmingly designed, 
and nothing can be more prettily or playfully touched. 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. S35 

*' At Edmonton Ids loving wife 
From the balcony spied 
Her tender husband, wond'ring much 
To see how he did ride. 

" ' Stop, stop, John Gilpin ! Here's the house 1 * 
They all at once did cry ; 
* The dinner waits, and wo are tired — ' 
Said Gilpin — ' So am I ! ' 

*' Six gentlemen upon the road 
Thus seeing Gilpin fly, 
With post-boy scamp 'ring in the rear, 
They raised the hue and cry : — 

" ' Stop thief ! stop thief ! — a highwayman t ' 
Not one of them was mute ; 
And all and each that passed that way 
Did join in the pursuit. 

" And now the turnpike gates again 
Flew open in short space ; 
The toll-men thinking, as before, 
That Gilpin rode a race." 

The rush, and shouting, and clatter are excellentl}^ depicted 
by the artist ; and we, who have been scoffing at his manner 
of designing animals, must here make a special exception in 
favor of the hens and chickens ; each has a different action, 
and is curiousl}?^ natural. 

Happ3^ are children of all ages who have such a ballad and 
such pictures as this in store for them ! It is a comfort to think 
that woodcuts never wear out, and that the book still may be 
had for a shilling, for those who can command that sum of 
mone}^ 

In the " Epping Hunt," which we owe to the facetious pen of 
Mr. Hood, our artist has not been so successful. There is here 
too much horsemanship and not enough incident for him ; but 
the portrait of Roundings the huntsman is an excellent sketch, 
and a ceuple of the designs contain great humor. The first 
represents the Cockney hero, who, " like a bird, was singing out 
while sitting on a tree." 

And in the second the natural order is reversed. The stag 
having taken heart, is hunting the huntsman, and the Cheap- 
side Nimrod is most ignominiously running away. 

The Easter Hunt, we are told, is no more ; and as the Qnar- 
terly Revieiv recommends the British public to purchase Mr. 
CatUn's pictures, as they form the only record of an interesting 
race now rapidly passing away, in like manner we should ex- 



336 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

hort all our friends to purchase Mr. Cruikshank's designs of 
another interesting race, that is run already and for the last 
time. 

Besides these, we must mention, in the line of our duty, 
the notable tragedies of "Tom Thumb" and " Bombastes 
Furioso," both of which have appeared with many illustrations 
by Mr. Cruikshank. The "brave army" of Bombastes ex- 
hibits a terrific display of brutal force, which must shock the 
sensibiUties of an P^nffllsh radical. And we can well under- 
stand the caution of the general, who bids this soldatesque 
effrenee to begone, and not to kick up a row. 

Such a troop of lawless ruffians let loose upon a populous 
city would play sad havoc in it ; and we fanc}- the massacres 
of Birmingham renewed, or at least of Badajoz, which, though 
not quite so dreadful, if we ma}- believe his Grace the Duke 
of Wellington, as the former scenes of slaughter, were never- 
theless severe enough : but we must not venture upon any ill- 
timed pleasantries in presence of the disturbed King Arthur 
and the awful ghost of Gaffer Thumb. 

We are thus carried at once into the supernatural, and here 
we find Cruikshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his 
time a little comic pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, 
good-natured fiends possible. We have before us Chamisso's 
" Peter Schlemihl," with Cruikshank's designs translated into 
German, and gaining nothing b}' the change. The "Kinder 
und Hans-Maerchen " of Grimm are likewise ornamented with 
a frontispiece copied from that one which appeared to the amus- 
ing version of the English work. The books on Phrenology and 
Time have been imitated by the same nation ; and even in 
France, whither reputation travels slower than to an}' counby 
except China, we have seen copies of the works of George 
Cruikshank. 

He in return has complimented the French b}' illustrating 
a couple of Lives of Napoleon, and the " Life in Paris" before 
mentioned. He has also made designs for Victor, Hugo's 
"Hans of Iceland." Strange, wild etchings were those, on a 
strange, mad subject ; not s(5 good in o«ir notion as the designs 
for the German books, the peculiar humor of which latter 
seemed to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the 
awful and the ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites 
and keeps awake the reader's attention ; the German writer 
and the English artist seem to have an entire faith in their sub- 
ject. The reader, no doubt, remembers the awful passage in 
" Peter Schlemihl," where the little gentleman purchases the 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 337 

shadow of that hero — " Have the kindness, noble sir, to ex- 
amine and try this bag." " He put his hand into his pocket, 
and drew thence a tolerabl}' large bag of Cordovan leather, to 
which a couple of thongs were fixed. I took it from him, 
and immediate!}' counted out ten gold pieces, and ten more,' 
and ten more, and still other ten, whereupon I held out m}' 
hand to him. Done, said I, it is a bargain ; you shall have 
my shadow for your bag. The bargain was concluded ; he 
knelt down before me, and I saw him with a wonderful neat- 
ness take my shadow from head to foot, lightly lift it up 
from the grass, roll and fold it up neatly, and at "last pocket 
it. He then rose up, bowed to me once more, and walked 
awa}^ again, disappearing behind the rose bushes. I don't 
know, but I thought I heard him laughing a little. I, how- 
ever, kept fast hold of the bag. Everything around me was 
bright in the sun, and as yet I gave no thought to what I 
had done." 

This marvellous event, narrated by Peter vAth such a faith- 
ful, circumstantial detail, is painted b}^ Cruikshank in the most 
wonderful poetic way, with that happj^ mixture of the real and 
supernatural that makes the narrative so curious, and like truth. 
The sun is shining with the utmost briUiancy in a great quiet 
park or garden ; there is a palace in the background, and a 
statue basking in the sun quite lonely and melanchoty ; there 
is a sun-dial, on which is a deep shadow, and in the front 
stands Peter Schlemihl, bag in hand : the old gentleman is 
down on his knees to him, and has just lifted off the ground 
the shadow of one leg ; he is going to fold it back neatl}'', as 
one does the tails of a coat, and will skow it, without any 
creases or crumples, along with the other black garments that 
lie in that immense pocket of his. Cruikshank has designed 
all this as if he had a ver}'^ serious belief in the story ; \k\ 
laughs, to be sure, but one fancies that he is a little frightened 
in his heart, in spite of all his fun and joking. 

The German tales we have mentioned before. " The Prince 
riding on the Fox," "Hans in Luck," "The Fiddler and his 
Goose," " Heads off," are all drawings which, albeit not before 
us now, nor seen for ten years, remain indehbly fixed on the 
memor3\ Heisst da etwa Rumpelstilzchen ? " There sits the 
Queen on her throne, surrounded by grinning beef-eaters, and 
little Rumpelstiltskin stamps his foot through the floor in the 
excess of his tremendous despair. In one of these German 
tales, if we remember rightly, there is an account of a little 
orphan who is carried away by a pitying fairy for a term of 

i:2 



338 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

seven 3^ears, and passing that period of sweet apprenticeship 
among the imps and sprites of fair3'-land. Has our artist 
been among the same com pan}", and brought back their por- 
traits in his sketch-book? He is the onh^ designer fair3'-land 
has had. Callot's imps, for all their strangeness, are only of 
the earth earthy. Fuseli's fairies belong to the infernal regions 
the}^ are monstrous, lurid, and hideously' melanchol}'. Mr. 
Cruikshank alone has had a true insight into the character of 
the " little people." The}' are something like men and women, 
and 3'et not flesh and blood ; the}* are laughing and mischiev- 
ous, but wh3' we know not. Mr. Cruikshank, however, has 
had some dream or the other, or else a natural m3'sterious in- 
stinct (as the Seherinn of Prevorst had for beholding ghosts), 
or else some preternatural fair3' revelation, which has made him 
acquainted with the looks and wa3's of the fantastical subjects 
of Oberon and Titania. 

We have, unfortunatel3', do fair3' portraits ; but, on the other 
hand, can descend lower than fair3'-land, and have seen some 
fine specimens of devils. One has alread3' been raised, and the 
reader has seen him tempting a fat Dutch burgomaster, in an 
ancient gloom3' market-place, such as George Cruikshank can 
draw as well as Mr. Prout, Mr. Nash, or an3^ man living. 
There is our friend once more ; our friend the burgomaster, in 
a highl3^ excited state, and running as hard as his great legs 
will cany him, with our mutual enem3" at his tail. 

AVhat are' the bets ; will that long-legged bondholder of a 
devil come up with the honest Dutchman ? It serves him right : 
wh3" did he put his name to stamped paper? And 3"et we 
should not wonder if ^ some luck3' chance should turn up in the 
burgomaster's favor, and his infernal creditor lose his labor ; 
for one so proverbiall3' cunning as 3'onder tall individual with 
the saucer e3'es, it must be confessed that he has been ver3' 
often outwitted. 

There is, for instance, the case of " The Gentleman in 
Black," which has been illustrated b3' our artist. A 3'oung 
French gentleman, by name M. Desonge, who, having expended 
his patrimon3' in a variet3' of taverns and gaming-houses, was 
one da3' pondering upon the exhausted state of his finances, and 
utterl3' at a loss to think how he should provide means for 
future support, exclaimed, ver3' naturally, "What the devil 
shall I do?" He had no sooner spoken than a Gentleman in 
Black made his appearance, whose authentic portrait Mr. 
Cruikshank has had the honor to paint. This gentleman pro- 
duced a black-edged book out of a black bag, some black-edged 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 339 

papers tied up with black crape, and sitting down familiarl}' 
opposite M. Desonge, began conversing with him on the state 
of his affairs. 

It is needless to state what was the result of the interview. 
M. Desonge was induced b^^ the gentleman to sign his name to 
one of the black-edged papers, and found himself at the close 
of the conversation to be possessed of an unlimited command 
of capital. This arrangement completed, the Grentleman in 
Black posted (in an extraordinarily rapid manner) from Paris 
to London, there found a young English merchant in exactly 
the same situation in which M. Desonge had been, and con- 
cluded a bargain with the Briton of exactly the same nature. 

The book goes on to relate liow these 3'oung men spent the 
mone}^ so miraculous!}' handed over to them, and how both, 
when the period drew near that was to witness the performance 
of their part of the bargain, grew melanchol}', wretched, nay, 
so absolutely dishonorable as to seek for ever}' means of break- 
ing through their agreement. The Englishman living in a 
countr}^ where the lawyers are more astute than an}- other law- 
3'ers in the world, took the advice of a Mr. Bagsb}', of L3^on's 
Inn ; whose naiile, as we cannot find it in the " Law List," we 
presume to be fictitious. Who could it be that was a match for 

the devil? Lord very likely ; we shall not give his name, 

but let ever}^ reader of this Review fill up the blank according 
to his own fancy, and on comparing it with the cop}' purchased 
by his neighbors, he will find that fifteen out of twenty have 
written down the same honored name. 

Well, the Gentleman in Black was anxious for the fulfilment 
of his bond. The parties met at Mr. Bagsby's chambers to 
consult, the Black Gentleman foolishly thinking that he could 
act as his own counsel, and fearing no attorney alive. But 
mark the superiority of British law, and see how the black petti- 
fogger was defeated. 

Mr. Bagsby simply stated that he would take the case into 
Chancery, and his antagonist, utterly humiliated and defeated, 
refused to move a step farther in the matter. 

And now the French gentleman, M. Desonge, hearing of his 
friend's escape, became anxious to be free from his own rash 
engagements. He employed the same counsel who had been 
successful in the former instance, but the Gentleman in Black 
was a great deal wiser by this time, and whether M. Desonge 
escaped, or whether he is now in that extensive place which is 
paved with good intentions, we shall not say. Those who are 
anxious to know had better purchase the book wherein all these 




340 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

interesting matters are duly set down. There is one more 
diabolical picture in our budget, engraved by Mr. Thompson, 
the same dexterous artist who has rendered the former diaUeries 
so well. 

We may mention Mr. Thompson's name as among the first 
of the engravers to whom Cruikshank's designs have been en- 
trusted ; and next to him (if we ma}' be allowed to make such 
arbitrar}' distinctions) we ma}' place Mr. Williams ; and the 
reader is not possibly aware of the immense difficulties to be 
overcome in the rendering of these little sketches, which, traced 
b}" the designer in a few hours, require weeks' labor from the en- 
graver. Mr. Cruikshank has not been educated in the regular 
schools of drawing (very luckil}' for him, as we think), and con- 
sequentl}' has had to make a manner for himself, which is quite 
unlike that of an}' other draftsman. There is nothing in the 
least mechanical about it ; to produce his particular effects he 
uses his own particular lines, whi h are queer, free, fantastical, 
and must be followed in all their infinite twists and vagaries by , 
the careful tool of the engraver. Those three lovely lieads, for 
instance, imagined out of the rinds of lemons, are worth exam- 
ining, not so much for the jovial humor and w6nderful variety 
of feature exhibited in these darling countenances as for the en- 
graver's part of the work. See the infinite delicate cross-lines 
and hatchings which he is obliged to render ; let him go, not a 
hair's breadth, but the hundredth part of a hair's breadth, be- 
yond the given line, and the feeling of it is ruined. He receives 
these little dots and specks, and fantastical quirks of the pencil, 
and cuts away witi] a little knife round each, not too much nor 
too little. Antonio's pound of flesh did not puzzle the Jew so 
much ; and so well does the engraver succeed at last, that we 
never remember to have met with a single artist who did not 
vow that the wood-cutter had utterly ruined his design. 

Of Messrs. Thompson and Williams we have spoken as the 
first engravers in point of rank ; however, the regulations of 
professional precedence are certainly very difficult, and the rest 
of their brethren we shall not endeavor to class. Why should 
the artists who executed the cuts of the admirable "Three 
Courses " yield the pas to any one ? 

There, for instance, is an engraving by Mr. Landells, nearly 
as good in our opinion as the very best woodcut that ever was 
made after Cruikshank, and curiously happy in rendering the 
artist's pecuhar manner : this cut does not come from the face- 
tious publications which we have consulted ; but is a contribu- 
tion by Mr. Cruikshank to an elaborate and splendid botanical 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 341 

work upon the Orcliiclacefe of Mexico, by Mr. Bateman. Mr. 
Bateman despatched some extremel}' choice roots of this vahi- 
able plant to a friend in P^ngland, who, on the arrival of the 
case, consigned it to his gardener to unpack. A great deal of 
anxiet}' with regard to the contents was manifested by all con- 
cerned, but on the hd of the box being removed, there issued 
from it three or four fine specimens of the enormous Blatta 
beelle that had been preying upon the plants during the vo3^a<>-e ; 
against these the gardeners, the grooms, the porters, and the 
porters' children, issued forth in arms, and this scene the artist 
has immortalized. 

We have spoken of the admirable wa}^ in which Mr. Cruik- 
shank has depicted Irish character and Cockney character ; 
English country character is quite as faithfully delineated in 
the person of the stout porteress and her children, and of the 
" Chawbacon " with the shovel, on whose face is written " Zum- 
merzetsheer." Chawbacon appears in another plate, or else 
ChaAvbacon's brother. He has come up to Lunnan, and is look- 
ing about him at raaces. 

How distinct are these rustics from those whom we have just 
been examining ! They hang about the purlieus of the metrop- 
lolis : Brook Green, Epsom, Greenwich, Ascot, Goodwood, are 
[their haunts. The}^ visit London professionall}' once a 3^ear, 
and that is at the time of Bartholomew fair. How one may 
speculate upon the different degrees of rascalit}', as exhibited in 
each face of the thimblerigging trio, and form little histories for 
^these worthies, charming Nev/gate romances, such as have been 
of late the fashion ! Is any man so bhnd that he cannot see the 
exact face that is writhing under the thimblerigged hero's hat ? 
Like Timanthes of old, our artist expresses great passions with- 
out the aid of the human countenance. There is another speci- 
men — a street row of inebriated bottles. Is there any need of 
having a face after this? " Come on!" says Claret-bottle, a 
dashing, genteel fellow, with his hat on one ear — " Come on ! 
has an}' man a mind to tap me?" Claret-bottle is a little 
screwed (as one ma}' see b}' his legs), but full of ga3'et)' and 
courage ; not so that stout, apoplectic Bottle-of-rum, who has 
staggered against the wall, and has his hand upon his liver : the 
fellow hurts himself with smoking, that is clear, and is as sick 
as sick can be. See, Port is making awa}' from the storm, and 
Double X is as fiat as ditch-water. Against these, awful in 
their white robes, the sober watchmen come. 

Our artist then can cover up faces, and 3'et show them quite 
clearl}', as in the thimblerig group ; or he can do without faces 



342 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

altogether ; or he can, at a pinch, provide a countenance for a 
gentleman out of any given object — a beautiful Irish physiog- 
noin3^ being moulded upon a keg of whiske}' ; and a jolh' Enghsh 
countenance frothing out of a pot of ale (the spirit of brave 
Tob}' Philpot come back to reanimate his cla}) ; while in a 
fungus may be recognized the pln'siognoni}^ of a mushroom 
peer. Finally, if he is at a loss, he can make a living head, 
bod}^ and legs out of steel or tortoise-shell, as in the case of 
the vivacious pair of spectacles that are jockeying the nose of 
Cadd3^ Cuddle. 

Of late years Mr. Cruikshank has busied himself very much 
with steel engraving, and the consequences of that luck}' inven- 
tion have been, that his plates are now sold by thousands, 
where the}^ could onl}- be produced b}' hundreds before. He 
has made man}^ a bookseller's and author's fortune (we trust 
that in so doing he ma}^ not have neglected his own). Twelve 
admirable plates, furnished 3'earl3' to that facetious little publica- 
tion, the Comic Almanac^ have gained for it a sale, as we hear, 
of nearW twenty thousand copies. The idea of the work was 
novel ; there was, in the first number especiallv, a great deal of 
comic power, and Cruikshank's designs were so admirable that 
the Almanac at once became a vast favorite with the public, 
and has so remained ever since. 

Besides the twelve plates, this almanac contains a prophetic 
woodcut, accompan3ing an awful Blarne3'hum Astrologicum 
that appears in this and other almanacs. There is one that 
hints in pretty clear terms that with the Reform of Municipal 
Corporations the ruin of the great Lord Mayor of London is at 
hand. His lordship is meekly going to dine at an eightpenny 
ordinar3', — his giants in pawn, his men in armor dwindled to 
" one poor knight," his carriage to be sold, his stalwart alder- 
men vanished, his sheriffs, alas! and alas ! in gaol ! Another 
design shows that Rigdum, if a true, is also a moral and in- 
structive prophet. John Bull is asleep, or rather in a vision ; 
the cunning demon. Speculation, blowing a thousand bright 
bubbles about him. Meanwhile the rooks are busy at his fob, 
a knave has cut a cruel hole in his pocket, a rattlesnake has 
coiled safe round his feet, and will in a trice swallow Bull, 
chair, mone3' and all ; the rats are at his corn-bags (as if, poor 
devil, he had corn to spare) ; his faithful dog is bolting his leg- 
of-mutton — nay, a thief has gotten hold of his ver3^ candle, and 
there, b3^ way of moral, is his ale-pot, which looks and winks in 
his face, and seems to say, O Bull, all this is froth, and a cruel 
satirical picture of a certain rustic who had a goose that laid 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 843 

certain golden eggs, which goose the rustic slew in expectation 
of finding all the eggs at once. This is goose and sage too, to 
borrow the pun of ' ' learned Doctor Gill ; " but we shrewdly 
suspect that Mr. Cruikshank is becoming a little conservative in 
his notions. 

We love these pictures so that it is hard to part us, and we 
still fondl}' endeavor to hold on, but this wild word, farewell, 
must be spoken b}- the best friends at last, and so good-by, 
brave woodcuts : we feel quite a sadness in coming to the last 
of our collection. 

In the earlier numbers of the Comic Almanac all the manners 
and customs of Londoners that would afford food for fun were 
noted down ; and if during the last two 3'ears the mysterious 
personage who, under the title of " Rigdum Funnidos," com- 
piles this ephemeris, has been compelled to resort to romantic 
tales, we must suppose that he did so because the great me- 
tropolis was exhausted, and it was necessary to discover new 
worlds in the cloud-land of fancy. The character of Mr. Stubbs, 
who made his appearance in the Almanac for 1839, had, we think, 
great merit, although his adventures were somewhat of too tragi- 
cal a description to provoke pure laughter. 

We should be glad to devote a few pages to the " Illustra- 
tions of Time," the " Scraps and Sketches," and the " Illustra- 
tions of Phrenology," which are among the most famous of our 
artist's publications ; but it is ver}' difficult to find new terms of 
praise, as find them one must, when reviewing Mr. Cruikshank's 
publications, and more difficult still (as the reader of this notice 
will no doubt have perceived for himself long since) to translate 
his design into words, and go to the printer's box for a descrip- 
tion of all that fun and humor which the artist can produce by a 
few skilful turns of his needle. A famous article upon the " Il- 
lustrations of Time " appeared some dozen years since in Black- 
wood's Mar/azine^ of which the conductors have alwa3'S been 
great admirers of our artist, as became men of honor and 
genius. To these grand qualities do not let it be supposed that 
we are laying claim, but, thank heaven, Cruikshank's humor is 
so good and benevolent that any man must love it, and on this 
score we may speak as well as another. 

Then there are the "Greenwich Hospital " designs, which 
must not be passed over. " Greenwich Hospital " is a hearty, 
good-natured book, in the Tom Dibdin school, treating of the 
virtues of British tars, in approved nautical language. They 
nuuil Frenchmen and S[)aniards, they go out in brigs and take 
frigates, thev relieve women in distress, and are yard-arm and 



344 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

yard-arming, athwart-hawsiug, marlinspiking, binnacling, and 
helm's-a-leeing, as honest seamen invariabl}^ do, in novels, on 
the stage, and doubtless on board ship. This we cannot take 
npon us to say, but the artist, like a true Enghshman, as he is, 
loves dearl}' these brave guardians of Old England, and chron- 
icles their rare or fanciful exploits with the greatest good-will. 
Let an}^ one look at the noble head of Nelson in the ' ' Family 
Librar3'," and thej^ will, we are sure, think with us that the 
designer must have felt and loved what he drew. There are to 
this abridgment of Southe3''s admirable book man^^ more cuts 
after Cruikshank ; and about a dozen pieces by the same hand 
will be found in a work equall}' popular, Lockhart's excellent 
'' Life of Napoleon." Among these the retreat from Moscow is 
very fine ; the Mamlouks most vigorous, furious, and barbarous, 
as thev should be. At the end of these three volumes Mr. 
Cruikshank's contributions to the '' Family Library " seem sud- 
denly to have ceased. 

We are not at all disposed to undervalue the works and 
genius of Mr. Dickens, and we are sure that he would admit as 
readily as any man th& wonderful assistance that he has derived 
from the artist who has given us the portraits of his ideal per- 
sonages, and made them familiar to all the world. Once seen, 
these figures remain impressed on the memor}', which other- 
wise would have had no hold upon them, and the heroes and 
heroines of Boz become personal acquaintances with each of us. 
Oh, that Hogarth could have illustrated Fielding in the same 
way ! and fixed . down on paper those grand figures of Parson 
Adams, and Squire Allworthy, and the great Jonathan Wild. 

With regard to the modern romance of " Jack Sheppard," 
in which the latter personage makes a second appearance, it . 
seems to us that Mr. Cruikshank really created the tale, and 
that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were, onl}- put words to it. Let any 
reader of the novel think over it for a while, now that it is some 
months since he has perused and laid it down — let him think, 
and tell us what he remembers of the tale? George Cruik- 
shank's pictures — always George Cruikshank's pictures. The 
storm in the Thames, for instance : all the author's la;bored 
description of that event has passed clean awa}^ — we have only 
before the mind's eye the fine plates of Cruikshank : the poor 
wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as the waves come 
rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift of the 
great swollen black waters. And let anj^ man look at that 
second plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must 
acknowledge how much more brilliant the artist's description is 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 345 

than the writer's, and what a real genius for the terrible as well 
as for the ridiculous the former has ; how awful is the gloom of 
the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from the houses here 
and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at all, 
which is too turbid and raging : a great heav}^ rack of clouds 
goes sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches, 
the murderers, are borne away with the stream. 

The author requires man}^ pages to describe the fury of the 
storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, 
he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melan- 
choly in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames : " the ripple 
of the water," ''the darkling current," "the indistinctively 
seen craft," " the solemn shadows" and other phenomena visi- 
ble on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) 
in order to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind for the 
deeper gloom and horror which is to ensue. Then follow pages 
of description. "As Rowland sprang to the helm, and gave 
the signal for pursuit, a war like a volley of ordnance was heard 
aloft, and the wind again burst its bondage. A moment be- 
fore the surface of the stream was as black as ink. It was now 
whitening, hissing, and seething, like an enormous caldron. 
The blast once more swept over the agitated river, whirled off 
the sheets of foam, scattered them far and wide in rain-drops, 
and left the raging torrent blacker than before. Destruction 
ever3'where marked the course of the gale. Steeples toppled 
and towers reeled beneath its fur3\ All was darkness, horror, 
confusion, ruin. Men fled from their tottering habitations 
and returned to them, scared by greater danger. The end of 
the world seemed at hand. . . . The hurricane had now 
reached its climax. The blast shrieked, as if exulting in its 
wrathful mission. Stunning and continuous, the din seemed 
almost to take awa}^ the power of hearing. He who had faced 
the gale would have been instantly stijled^'' &c. &c. See with 
what a tremendous war of words (and good loud words too ; 
Mr. Ainsworth's description is a good and spirited one) the 
author is obliged to pour in upon the reader before he can 
effect his purpose upon the latter, and inspire him with a 
proper terror. The painter does it at a glance, and old Wood's 
dilemma in the midst of that tremendous storm, with the httle 
infant at his bosom, is remembered afterwards, not from the 
words, but from the visible image of them that the artist has 
left us. 

It would not, perhaps, be out of place to glance through the 
whole of the " Jack Sheppard" plates, which are among the 



346 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

most finished and the most successful of Mr. Cruikshank's per- 
formances, and say a word or two concerning them. Let us 
begin with finding fault with No. 1, " Mr. Wood offers to adopt 
little Jack Sheppard." A jDOor print, on a poor subject ; the 
figure of the woman not as carefully designed as it might be, 
and the expression of the eyes (not an uncommon fault with 
our artist) much caricatured. The print is cut up, to use the 
artist's phrase, b}^ the number of accessories which the engraver 
has thought proper, after the author's elaborate description, 
elaborately to reproduce. The plate of "Wild discovering 
Darrell in the loft" is admirable — ghastl3^ terrible, and the 
treatment of it extraordinaril}^ skilful, minute, and bold. The 
intricacies of the tile- work, and the mysterious twinkling of 
light among the beams, are excellently' felt and rendered ; and 
one sees here, as in the two next plates of the storm and mur- 
der, what a fine eye the artist has, what a skilful hand, and 
what a S3'mpath3" for the wild and dreadful. As a mere imita- 
tion of nature, the clouds and the bridge in the murder picture 
may be examined bj- painters who make far higher pretensions 
tlian Mr. Cruikshank. In point of workmanship the}^ are 
equally good, the manner quite unaffected, the effect produced 
without any violent contrast, the whole scene evidently well 
and philosophically arranged in the artist's brain, before he 
began to put it upon copper. 

The famous drawing of "Jack carving the name on the 
beam," which has been transferred to half the play-bills in town, 
is overloaded with accessories, as the first plate ; but they are ' 
much better arranged than in the last-named engraving, and do 
not injure the effect of the principal figure. Remark, too, the 
conscientiousness of the artist, and that shrewd pervading idea 
of form which is one of his principal characteristics. Jack is 
surrounded by all sorts of implements of his profession ; he 
stands on a regular carpenter's table: away in the shadow 
under it lie shavings and a couple of carpenter's hampers. 
^The glue-pot, the mallet, the chisel-handle, the planes, the 
;saws, the hone with its cover, and the other paraphernalia are 
all represented with extraordinar}^ accuracy and forethought. 
The man's mind has retained the exact drawing of all these 
minute objects (unconsciously perhaps to himself) , but we can 
see with what keen eyes he must go through the world, and 
what a fund of facts (as such a knowledge of the shape of ob- 
jects is in his profession) this keen student of nature has stored 
away in his brain. In the next plate, where Jack is escaping 
from his mistress, the figure of that lady, one of the deepest of 



f 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 347 

the /3a$vKo\7roi, strikes us as disagreeable and unrefined ; that 
of Winifred is, on tlie contrar}^ very pretty and graceful; and 
Jack's puzzled, slinking look must not be forgotten. All the 
accessories are good, and the apartment has a snug, cosy air ; 
which is not remarkable, except that it shows how faithfully 
the designer has performed his work, and how curiously he has 
entered into all the particulars of tlie subject. 

Master Thames Darrell, the handsome 3'oung man of the 
book, is, in Mr. Cruikshank's portraits of him, no favorite of 
ours. The lad seems to wish to make up for the natural msio-- 
niiicance of his face by frowning on all occasions most porten- 
tously. This figure, borrowed from the compositor's \ ^^ 
desk, will give a notion of what we mean. Wild's face ^i • 
is too violent for the great man of history (if we may I 

call Fielding history) , but this is in consonance with the rant- 
ing, frowning, braggadocio character that Mr. Ainsworth has 
given him. 

The ' ' Interior of Willesden Church " is excellent as a com- 
position, and a piece of artistical workmanship ; the groups are 
well arranged ; and the figure of Mrs. Sheppard looking round 
alarmed, as her son is robbing the dandy Kneebone, is charm- 
ing, simple, and unaffected. Not so "Mrs. Sheppard ill in 
bed," whose face is screwed up to an expression vastly too 
tragic. The little glimpse of the church seen through the open 
door of the room is ver}^ beautiful and poetical : it is in such 
small hints that an artist especiall}- excels ; they are the morals 
which he loves to append to his stories, and are always appro- 
priate and welcome. The boozing ken is not to our liking ; 
Mrs. Sheppard is there with her horrified eyebrows again. 
Why this exaggeration — is it necessary for the public ? We 
think not, or if they require such excitement, let our artist, like 
a true painter as he is, teach them better things.* 

The "Escape from Willesden Cage" is excellent; the 
" Burglar}^ in Wood's house " has not less merit ; "Mrs. Shep- 

* A gentleman (whose wit is so celebrated that one should be very 
cautious in repeating his stories) gave the writer a good illustration of the 

philosophy of exaggeration. Mr. was once behind the scenes at the 

Opera when the scene-shifters were preparing for the ballet. Flora was to 
sleep under a bush, whereon were growing a number of roses, and amidst 
which was fluttering a gay covey of butterflies. In size the roses exceeded 
the most expansive sunflowers, and the butterflies were as large as cocked 

hats ; — the scene-shifter explained to Mr. , who asked the reason why 

everything was so magnified, that the galleries could never see the objects 
unless they were enormously exaggerated. How many of our writers and 
designers work for the galleries '( 



348 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

pard in Bedlam," a ghastly picture indeed, is finely conceived, 
but not, as we fancy, so carefully executed ; it would be better 
for a little more careful drawing in the female figure. 

' '■ Jack sitting for his picture *' is a very pleasing group, and 
savors of the manner of Hogarth, who is introduced in the 
company. The *-' Murder of Trenchard " must be noticed too 
as remarkable for the effect and terrible vigor which tlie artist 
has given to the scene. The ''-Willesden Churchyard" has 
great merit too, but the gems of the book are the little vignettes 
illustrating the escape from Newgate. Here, too, much ana- 
tomical care of drawing is not required ; the figures are so 
small that the outline and attitude need only to be indicated, 
and the designer has produced a series of figures quite remark- 
able for reality and poetry too. There are no less than ten of 
Jack*s feats so described by Mr. Cruikshank. (Let us say a 
word here in praise of the excellent manner in which the author 
has carried us through the adventure.) Here is Jack clattering 
up the chimney, now peering into the lonely red room, now 
opening "the door between the red room and the chapel." 
What a wild, fierce, scared look he has, the young ruffian, as 
cautiousl}' he steps in, holding light his bar of iron. You can 
see by his face how his heart is beating ! If any one were there ! 
but no ! And this is a very fine characteristic of the prints, the 
extreme loneliness of them all. Not a soul is there to disturb 
him — woe to him who should — and Jack drives in the chapel 
gate, and shatters down the passage door, and there you have 
him on the leads. Up he goes ! it is but a spring of a few feet 
from the blanket, and he is gone — abiit^ evasit, erupit! Mr. 
Wild must catch him again if he can. 

We must not forget to mention "Oliver Twist," and Mr. 
Cruikshank's famous designs to that work.* The sausage 
scene at Fagin's, Nancy seizing the bo}^ ; that capital piece of 
humor, Mr. Bumble's courtship, which is even better in Cruik- 
shank's version than in Boz's exquisite account of the interview ; 
Sykes's farewell to the dog ; and the Jew, — the dreadful Jew 
— that Cruikshank drew ! What a fine touching picture of mel- 
ancholy desolation is that of Sykes and the dog ! The poor cur 
is not too well drawn, the landscape is stiff and formal ; but in 
this case the faults, if faults the}' be, of execution rather add to 
than diminish the effect of the picture : it has a strange, wild, 
drear}^ broken-hearted look ; we fancy we see the landscape as 
it must have appeared to Sykes, when ghastly and with blood- 

* Or his new work, " The Tower of London," which promises even to 
surpass Mr. Cruikshank's former productions. 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 349 

shot e^-es he looked at it. As for the Jew in the dungeon, let 
us say nothing of it — what can we say to describe it? What 
a fine homely poet is the man who can produce this little world 
of mirth or woe for us ! Does he elaborate his effects by slow 
process of thought, or do they come to him by instinct? Does 
the painter ever arrange in his brain an image so complete, that 
he afterwards can copy it exactly on the canvas, or does the 
hand work in spite of him ? 

A great deal of this random work of course every artist has 
done in his time ; many men produce effects of which they never 
dreamed, and strike off excellences, haphazard, which gain for 
them reputation; but a fine quaUty in Mr. Cruikshank, the 
quality of his success, as we have said before, is the extraordi- 
uar}^ earnestness and good faith with which he executes all he 
attempts — the ludicrous, the polite, the low, the terrible. In 
the second of these he often, in our fanc}^ fails, his figures lack- 
ing elegance and descending to caricature ; but there is some- 
thing fine in this too : it is good that he should fail, that he 
should have these honest naive notions reorardins: tlie heau 
monde^ the characteristics of which a namby-pamby tea-party 
painter could hit off far better than he. He is a great deal too 
downright and manly to appreciate the flimsy delicacies of small 
societ}^ — you cannot expect a lion to roar you like an}' sucking 
dove, or frisk about a drawing-room like a lad3''s little spaniel. 

If then, in the course of his life and business, he has been 
occasionally obliged to imitate the ways of such small animals, 
he has done so, let us say it at once, clumsil}', and like as a 
lion should. Many artists, we hear, hold his works rather 
cheap ; they prate about bad drawing, want of scientific knowl- 
edge : — they would have something vastly more neat, regular, 
anatomical. 

Not one of the whole band most likely but can paint an 
Academy figure better than himself; nay, or a portrait of an 
alderman's lady and family of children. But look down the list 
of the painters and tell us who are they ? How many among 
these men are poets (makers), possessing the faculty to create, 
the greatest among the gifts with which Providence has endowed 
the mind of man ? Say how many there are, count up what they 
have done, and see what in the course of some nine-and-tweuty 
years has been done by this indefatigable man. 

What amazing energetic fecundity do we find in him ! As 
a boy he began to fight for bread, has been hungry (twice a day 
we trust) ever since, and has been obliged to sell his wit for his 
bread week by week. And his wit. sterling gold as it is, will 



350 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

find no such purchasers as the fashionable painter's thin pinch- 
beck, who can live comfortably for six weeks, when paid for 
and pahiting a portrait, and fancies his mind prodigiously occu- 
pied all the while. There was an artist in Paris, an artist hair- 
dresser, who used to be fatigued and take restoratives after 
inventing a new coiffure. By no such gentle operation of head- 
dressing has Cruikshank lived : time was (we are told so ii* 
print) when for a picture with thirt}^ heads in it he was paid 
three guineas — a poor week's pittance truly, and a dire week's 
labor. AVe make no doubt that the same labor would at present 
bring him twent}^ times the sum ; but whether it be ill paid or 
well, what labor has Mr. Cruikshank's been ! Week by week, 
for thirty years, to produce something new ; some smiling off- 
spring of painful labor, quite independent and distinct from its 
ten thousand jovial brethren ; in what hours of sorrow and ill- 
health to be told by the world, " Make us laugh or 3'ou starve — 
Give us fresh fun ; we have eaten up the old and are hungr3^" 
And all this has he been obhged to do — to wring laughter day 
by day, sometimes, perhaps, out of want, often certainly from 
ill-health or depression — to keep the fire of his brain perpetu- 
ally alight : for the greedy public will give it no leisure to cool. 
This he has done and done well. He has told a thousand truths 
in as many strange and fascinating waj-s ; he has given a thou- 
sand new and pleasant thoughts to millions of people ; he has 
never used his wit dishonestly ; he has never, in all the exuber- 
ance of his frolicsome humor, caused a single painful or guilty 
blush : how little do we think of the extraordinary power of 
this man, and how ungrateful we are to him ! 

Here, as we are come round to the charge of ingratitude, the 
starting-post from which we set out, perhaps we had better con- 
clude. The reader will perhaps wonder at the high-flown tone 
in which we speak of the services and merits of an individual, 
whom he considers a humble scraper on steel, that is wonder- 
fulh' popular alread}^ But none of us remember all the benefits 
we owe him ; they have come one by one, one driving out the 
memor3' of the other : it is onlj' when we come to examine them 
all together, as the writer has done, who has a pile of books on 
the table before him — a heap of personal kindnesses from 
George Cruikshank (not presents, if you please, for we bought, 
borrowed, or stole every one of them) — that we feel what we 
owe him. Look at one of Mr. Cruikshank's works, and we 
pronounce him an excellent humorist. Look at all : his reputa- 
tion is increased by a kind of geometrical progression ; as a 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 351 

whole diamond is a hundred times more vakiable than the 
hundred splinters into which it might be broken would be. A 
fine rough English diamond is this about which we have been 
writing. 



JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES OF LIFE AND 

CHARACTER* 

"We, who can recall the consulship of Plancus, and quite 
respectable, old-fogyfied times, remember amongst other amuse- 
ments which we had as children the pictures at which we were 
permitted to look. There was Bo3'deirs Shakspeare, blacl^ and 
ghastly galler}^ of murky Opies, glum Northcotes, straddling 
Fuselis ! there were Lear, Oberon, Hamlet, with starting 
muscles, rolling eyeballs, and long pointing quivering fingers ; 
there was little Prince Arthur (Northcote) crying, in white 
satin, and bidding good Hubert not put out his eyes; there 
was Hubert cr3'ing ; there was little Rutland being run througii 
the poor little body by bloody Clittbrd ; there was Cardinal 
Beaufort (Reynolds) gnashing his teeth, and grinning and 
howling demoniacally on his death-bed (a picture frightful to 
the present day) ; there was Lady Hamilton (Romney) waving 
a torch, and dancing before a black background, — a melan- 
choly museum indeed. Smirke's delightful "Seven Ages" 
onl}' fitfully relieved its general gloom. We did not like to 
inspect it unless the elders were present, and plenty of lights 
and company' were in the room. 

Cheerful relatives used to treat us to Miss Linwood's. Let 
the children of the present generation thank their stars that 
tragedy is put out of their way. Miss Linwood's was worsted- 
work. Your grandmother or grandaunts took you there, and 
said the pictures were admirable. You saw "the Woodman" 
in worsted, with his axe and dog, trampling through the snow ; 
the snow bitter cold to look at, the woodman's pipe wonderful : 
a gloomy piece, that made you shudder. There were large 
dingy pictures of woollen martyrs, and scowling warriors with 
limbs strongly knitted ; there was especially, at the endi ®f a 
black passage, a den of lions, that would frighten any 'boy 
not born in Africa, or Exeter 'Change, and accustomed to 
them. 

* Reprinted from the Quarterly Review, No. 191, Dec. 1854, by permis- 
sion of Mr. John Murray. 



352 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

Another exhibition used to be West's Gallery, where the 
pleasing figures of Lazarus in his grave-clothes, and Death on 
the pale horse, used to impress us children. The tombs of 
Westminster Abbej'^, the vaults at St. Paul's, the men in armor 
at the Tower, frowning ferociously out of their helmets, and 
wielding their dreadful swords ; that superhuman Queen Eliza- 
beth at the end of the room, a livid sovereign with glass e3'es, 
a ruff, and a dirty satin petticoat, riding a horse covered with 
steel : who does not remember these sights in London in the 
consulship of Plancus ? and the wax-work in Fleet Street, not 
like that of Madame Tussaud's, whose chamber of death is gay 
and brilliant ; but a nice old gloomy wax- work, full of murderers ; 
and as a chief attraction, the Dead Babj^ and the Princess 
Charlotte lying in state ? 

Our storj'-books had no pictures in them for the most part. 
Frank (dear old Frank !) had none ; nor the '' Parent's Assist- 
ant;" nor the '^ Evenings at Home;" nor our copy of the 
*' Ami des Enfans : " there were a few just at the end of the 
Spelling-Book ; besides the allegory at the beginning, of Edu- 
cation leading up Youth to the temple of Industr}^, where Dr. 
Dilworth and Professor Walkinghame stood with crowns of 
laurel. There were, we say, just a few pictures at the end of 
the Spelling-Book, little oval gray woodcuts of Bewick's, mostly 
of the Wolf and the Lamb, the Dog and the Shadow, and Brown, 
Jones, and Robinson with long ringlets and little tights ; but 
for pictures, so to speak, what had we? The rough old wood- 
blocks in the old harlequin-backed fairy-books had served 
hundreds of years ; before our Plancus, in the time of Priscus 
Plancus — in Queen Anne's time, who knows ? We were 
flogged at school ; we were fifty boj^s in our boarding-house, 
and had to wash in a leaden trough, under a cistern, with lumps 
of fat yellow soap floating about in the ice and water. Are our 
sons ever flogged? Have the}^ not dressing-rooms, hair-oil, 
hip-baths, and Baden towels? And what picture-books the 
young villains have ! What have these children done that they 
should be so much happier than we were ? 

We had the "Arabian Nights" and Walter Scott, to be 
sure. Smirke's illustrations to the former are very fine. We 
di(^{iot know how good they were then ; but we doubt whether 
we did not prefer the little old '^ Miniature Library Nights" 
with frontispieces by Uwins ; for these books the pictures don't 
count. Every boy of imagination does his own pictures to 
Scott and the " Arabian Nights" best. 

Of funny pictures there were none especially intended for us 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 353 

children. There was Rowlandson's "Doctor S3^ntax": Doc- 
tor Syntax in a fuzz-wig, on a horse with legs like sausages, 
riding races, making love, frolicking with ros}^ exuberant dam- 
sels. Those pictures were very funny, and that aquatinting 
■ and the gay-colored plates very pleasant to witness ; but if we 
could not read the poem in those days, could we digest it in 
this? Nevertheless, apart from the text which we could not 
master, we remember Doctor Syntax pleasantly, like those 
cheerful painted hieroglyphics in the Nineveh Court at Syden- 
ham. What matter for the arrow-head, illegible stuff? give 
us the placid grinning kings, twanging their jolly bows over 
their rident horses, wounding tiiose good-humored enemies, 
who tumble gayl}^ off the towers, or drown, smiHng, in the 
dimpling waters, amidst the anerithmon gelasma of the fish. 

After Doctor Syntax, the apparition of Corinthian Tom, 
Jerry Hawthorn, and the facetious Bob Logic must be recorded 
— a wondrous history indeed theirs was! When the future 
student of our manners comes to look over the pictures and the 
writing of these queer volumes, what will he think of our so- 
ciety, customs, and language in the consulship of Plancus? 
" Corinthian," it appears, was the phrase applied to men of 
fashion and ton in Plancus's time : they were the brilliant prede- 
cessors of the " swell" of the present period — brilliant, but 
somewhat barbarous, it must be confessed. The Corinthians 
were in the habit of drinking a great deal too mucli in Tom 
Cribb's parlor: they used to go and see "Ufe" in the gin- 
shops; of nights, walking home (as well as they could), they 
used to knock down " Charleys," poor harmless old watchmen 
with lanterns, guardians of the streets of Rome, Planco Con- 
sule. They perpetrated a vast deal of boxing ; they put on the 
"mufflers" in Jackson's rooms; they "sported their prads" 
in the Ring in the Park ; they attended cock-fights, and were 
enlightened patrons of dogs and destroyers of rats. Besides 
these sports, the delassemens of gentlemen mixing with the peo- 
ple, our patricians, of course, occasionally enjoyed the society 
of their own class. What a wonderful picture that used to be 
of Corinthian Tom dancing with Corinthian Kate at Almack's ! 
AVhat a prodigious dress Kate wore! With what graceful 
abandon the pair flung their arms about as they swept through 
the mazy quadrille, with all the noblemen standing round in 
their stars and uniforms ! You may still, doubtless, see the 
pictures at the British Museum, or find the volumes in the 
> corner of some old country-house library. Yon are led to 
suppose that the English anstocracy of 1820 did dance and 



354 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

caper in that wa}', and box and drink at Tom Cribb's, and 
knock down watchmen ; and the chikh'en of to-da}^, turning 
to their eklers, may say " Grandmamma, did 3'ou wear such 
a dress as that, when you danced at Ahnack's ? There was 
very httle of it, grandmamma. Did grandpapa kill man}^ 
watchmen when he was a young man, and frequent thieves' gin- 
shops, cock-fights, and the ring, before you married him ? Did 
he use to talk the extraordinary' slang and jargon which is 
printed in this book? He is very much changed. He seems 
a gentlemanly old bo}^ enough now." 

In the above-named consulate, when we had grandfathers 
alive, there would be in the old gentleman's library in the 
countr}^ two or three old mottled portfolios, or great swollen 
scrap-books of blue paper, full of the comic prints of grand- 
papa's time, ere Plancus ever had the fasces borne before him. 
Tliese prints were signed Gilraj^ Bunbur^', Rowlandson, Wood- 
ward, and some actuallj^ George Cruikshank — for George is 
a \'eteran now, and he took the etching needle in hand as a 
child. He caricatured "Bone}'," borrowing not a little from 
(jilray in his first puerile efforts. He drew Louis XVIII. 
trj'ing on Bone3''s boots. Before the century was actually 
in its teens we believe that George Cruikshank was amusing 
the public. 

In those great colored prints in our grandfathers' portfolios 
in the library, and in some other apartments of the house, 
where the caricatures used to be pasted in those days, we 
found things quite beyond our comprehension. Bone}^ was 
represented as a fierce dwarf, with goggle e3'es, a huge laced 
hat and tricolored plume, a crooked sabre, reeking with 
blood : a little demon revelling in lust, murder, massacre. 
John Bull was shown kicking him a good deal : indeed he was 
prodigiousl}' kicked all through that series of pictures ; by 
Sidney Smith and our brave allies the gallant Turks ; by the 
excellent and patriotic Spaniards ; by the amiable and indig- 
nant Russians, — all nations had boots at the service of poor 
JMaster Bone}^ How Pitt used to dety him ! How good old 
George, Kingof Brobdingnag, laughed at GuUiver-Boney, sailing 
about in his tank to make sport for their Majesties ! This little 
fiend, this beggar's brat, cowardly, murderous, and atheistic 
as he was (we remember, in those old portfolios, pictures rep- 
resenting Bone}'^ and his family in rags, gnawing raw bones 
in a Corsican hut ; Boney murdering the sick at Jaffa ; Boney 
with a hookah and a large turban, having adopted the Turkish 
religion, &c.) — this Corsican monster, nevertheless, had some 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



o r - 
OOi) 



devoted friends in England, according to the Gilraj chronicle 
— a set. of villains who loved atheism, tyranny, plunder, and 
wickedness in general, like their French friend. In the pictures 
these men were ail represented as dwarfs, like their ally. The 
miscreants got into power at one time, and, if we remember 
right, were called the Broad-backed Administration. One 
with shaggy eyebrows and a bristly beard, the hirsute ringleader 
of the rascals, was, it appears, called Charles James' Fox • 
another miscreant, with a blotched countenance, was a certain 
Sheridan ; other imps were hight Erskine, Norfolk (Jockey 
of), Moira, Henry Petty. As in our childish innocence we 
used to look at these demons, now sprawling and tipsy in their 
cups ; now scaling heaven, from which the angelic Pitt hurled 
them down ; now cursing the light (their atrocious ringleader 
Fox was represented with hairy cloven feet, and a tail and 
horns) ; now kissing Boney's boot, but inevitably discomfited 
by Pitt and the other good angels : we hated these vicious 
wretches, as good children should ; we were on thejside of 
Virtue and Pitt and Grandpapa. But if our sisters wanted to 
look at the portfolios, the good old grandfather used to hesi- 
tate. There were some prints among them ver}^ odd indeed ; 
some that girls could not understand ; some that boys, indeed, 
had best not see. We swiftly turn over those prohibited 
pages. How many of them there were in the wild, coarse, 
reckless, ribald, generous book of old English humor! 

How savage the satire was — how fierce the assault — what 
garbage hurled at opponents — what foul blows were hit — 
what language of Billingsgate flung ! Fancy a partj^ in a coun- 
try-house now looking over Woodward's facetiae or some of the 
Gilray comicalities, or the slatternly Saturnalia of Rowland- 
son ! Whilst we live we must laugh, and have folks to make 
us laugh. We cannot afford to lose Satyr with his pipe and 
dances and gambols. But we have washed, combed, clothed, 
and taught the rogue good manners : or rather, let us say, he 
has learned them himself; for he is of nature soft and kindly, 
and he has put aside his mad pranks and tipsy habits ; and, 
frolicsome always, has become gentle and harmless, smitten 
into shame l)y the pure presence of our women and the sweet 
confiding smiles of our children. Among the veterans, the old 
pictorial satirists, we have mentioned the famous name of one 
humorous desisrner who is still alive and at work. Did we not 
see, b}^ his own hand, his own portrait of his own famous face, 
and whiskers, in the Illustrated London News the other day? 
There was a print in that paper of an assemblage of Teetotal- 



356 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

ers in " Sadler's Wells Theatre," and we straightway recog- 
nized the old Roman hand — the old Roman's of the time of 
Plancus — George Cruikshank's. There were the old bonnets 
and droll faces and shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 
1820 sure enough. And there was George (who has taken to 
the water-doctrine, as all the world knows) handing some 
teetotal cresses over a plank to the table where the pledge was 
being administered. How often has George drawn that pic- 
ture of Cruikshank ! Where haven't we seen it ? How fine 
it was, facing the effigy of Mr. Ainsworth in Ainsworth's Maga- 
zine when George illustrated that periodical ! How grand and 
severe he stands in that design in G. C.'s "Omnibus," where 
he represents himself tonged like St. Dunstan, and tweaking a 
wretch of a pubhsher by the nose ! The collectors of George's 
etchings — oh the charming etchings ! — oh the dear old " Ger- 
man Popular Tales ! " — the capital " Points of Humor" — the 
delightful '• Phrenolog3^" and " Scrap-books," of tlie good time, 
our time — Plancus's in fact ! — the collectors of the Georgian 
etchings, we say, have at least a hundred pictures of the artist. 
Why, we remember him in his favorite Hessian boots in " Tom 
and Jerry " itself ; and in woodcuts as far back as the Queen's 
trial. He has rather deserted satire and comedj' of late years, 
having turned his attention to the serious, and warlike, and 
sublime. Having confessed our age and prejudices, we prefer 
the comic and fanciful to the historic, romantic, and at present 
didactic George. May respect, and length of daj's, and com- 
fortable repose attend the brave, honest, kindh', pure-minded 
artist, humorist, moralist ! It was he first who brouoht Ens:- 
lish pictorial humor and children acquainted. Our 3'oung peo- 
ple and their fathers and mothers owe him man}^ a pleasant 
hour and harmless laugh. Is there no wa}' in which the coun- 
try- could acknowledge the long services and brave career of 
such a friend and benefactor? 

Since George's time humor has been converted. Comus 
and his wicked satyrs and leering fauns have disappeared, and 
fled into the lowest haunts ; and Comus's lad^^ (if she had 
a taste for humor, which ma^^ be doubted) might take up our 
funnj' picture-books without the slightest precautionar}^ squeam- 
ishness. What can be purer than the charming fancies of 
Richard Doyle? In all Mr. Punch's huge galleries can't we 
walk as safel}^ as through Miss Pinkerton's schoolrooms? 
And as we look at Mr. Punch's pictures, at the Illustrated Nevjs 
pictures, at all the pictures in the book-shop windows at this 
Christmas season, as oldsters, we feel a certain pang of envy 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 



''•'iT 



oo 



against the j^oungsters — they are too well off. Wh}- hadn't we 
picture-books? Why were we flogged so? A plague on the 
lictors and their rods in the time of Plancus ! 

And now, after this rambling preface, we are arrived at the 
subject in hand — Mr. John Leech and his " Pictures of Life and 
Character," in the collection of Mr. Punch, This book is better 
than plum-cake at Christmas. It is an enduring plum-cake, 
which you may eat and which you ma}^ slice and deliver to your 
friends ; and to which, having cut it, you may come again and 
welcome, from j^ear's end to year's end. In the frontispiece 
3'ou see Mr. Punch examining the pictures in his gallery — a 
portl3', well-dressed, middle-aged, respectable gentleman, in 
a white neck-clotli, and a polite evening costume — smiling in 
a very bland and agreeable manner upon one of his pleasant 
drawings, taken out of one of his handsome portfolios. Mr. 
Punch has verj'^ good reason to smile at the work and be satis- 
fied with tlie artist. Mr, Leech, his chief contributor, and some 
kindred humorists, with pencil and pen have served Mr. Punch 
admirably. Time was, if we remember Mr, P,'s history- right!}', 
that he did not wear silk stockings nor well-made clothes (the 
little dorsal irregularitj'in his figure is almost an ornament now, 
so excellent a tailor has he) . He was of humble beginnings. It 
is said he kept a ragged little booth, which he put up at corners 
of streets ; associated with beadles, policemen, his own ugly 
wife (whom he treated most scandalously), and persons in a 
low station of life ; earning a precarious li^•elihood by the crack- 
ing of wild jokes, the singing of ribald songs, and halfpence 
extorted from passers-by. He is the Satyric genius we s}X)ke 
of anon : he cracks his jokes still, for satire must live ; but he 
is 'combed, washed, neatly clothed, and perfectlj^ presentable. 
He goes into the verj^ best compan}' ; he keeps a stud at Mel- 
ton ; he has a moor in Scotland ; he rides in the Park ; has his 
stall at the Opera ; is constantl}' dining out at clubs and in pri- 
vate societ}' ; and goes every night in the season to balls and 
parties, where j^ou see the most beautiful w^omen possible. He 
is welcomed amongst his new friends the great ; though, like the 
good old English gentleman of the song, he does not forget 
the small. He pats the heads of street boys and girls ; relishes 
the jokes of Jack the costermonger and Bob the dustman ; 
good-naturedly spies out Molly the cook flirting with iwliceman 
X, or Mary the nursemaid as she listens to the fascinating 
guardsman. He used rather to laugh at guardsmen, ''plun- 
gers," and other military men ; and was until latter days very 
contemptuous in his behavior towards Frenchmen. He has 



358 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

a natural antipathy to pomp, and swagger, and fierce de- 
meanor. But now that the guardsmen are gone to war, and 
the dandies of ' ' The Rag " — dandies no more — are battling 
like heroes at Balaklava and Inkermann * by the side of their 
heroic alhes, Mr. Punch's laughter is changed to heart}" respect 
and enthusiasm. It is not against courage and honor he wars : 
but this great moralist — must it be owned? — has some popu- 
lar British prejudices, and these led him in peace time to laugh 
at soldiers and Frenchmen. If those hulking footmen who 
accompanied the carriages to the opening of Parliament the 
other da}', would form a plush brigade, wear only gunpowder 
in their hair, and strike with their great canes on the enemy, 
Mr. Punch would leave off laughing at Jeames, who meanwhile 
remains among us, to all outward appearance regardless of 
satire, and calmly consuming his five meals per diem. Against 
law3^ers, beadles, bishops and clergy, and authorities, Mr. 
Punch is still rather bitter. At the time of the Papal aggres- 
sion he was prodigiously angry ; and one of the chief misfor- 
tunes which happened to him at that period was that, through 
the violent opinions which he expressed regarding the Roman 
Catholic hierarchy, he lost the invaluable services, the graceful 
i:)encil, the harmless wit, the charming fancy of Mr. Do3'le. 
Another member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of 
Jeames, the author of the " Snob Papers," resigned his func- 
tions on account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present 
Emperor of the French nation, whose anger Jeames thought it 
was uupatriotic to arouse. Mr. Punch parted with these con- 
tributors : he filled their places with others as good. The boj'S 
at the railroad stations cried Punch just as cheeril}-, and sold 
just as man}-^ numbers, after these events as before. 

There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet 
John Leech is the right-hand man. Fanc}" a number of Punch 
without Leech's pictures ! What would 3'ou give for it? The 
learned gentlemen who write the w^ork must feel that, without 
him, it were as well left alone. Look at the rivals whom the 
popularit}' of Punch has brought into the field ; the direct imi- 
tators of Mr. Leech's manner — the artists with a manner of 
their own — how inferior their pencils are to his in humor, 
in depicting the public manners, in arresting, amusing the na- 
tion. The truth, the strength, the fvQQ vigor, the kind humor, 
the John Bull pluck and spirit of that hand are approached 
by no competitor. With what dexteritj^ he draws a horse, 
a woman, a child ! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man. 

* This was written in 1854. 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 359 

What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's 
chief contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem ! 
What famous thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and 
how Briggs, on the back of them, scampers across countr}' ! 
You see youth, strength, enjoyment, manhness in those draw- 
ings, and in none more so, to our thinking, than in the hundred 
pictures of children which this artist loves to design. Like 
a brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite soft 
and tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little 
golden heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, 
their sports, their jokes, laughter, caresses. Enfans terribles 
come home from Eton ; young Miss practising her first flirta- 
tion ; poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the gutter, 
or staggermg under the weight of Jacky, her nursechild, who 
is as big as herself — all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, 
meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with 
curious nicety by this amiable observer. 

We remember, in one of those ancient Gilray portfolios, 
a print which used to cause a sort of terror in us youthful spec- 
tators, and in which the Prince of Wales (his Ro3'al Highness 
was a Foxite then) was represented as sitting alone in a mag- 
nificent hall after a voluptuous meal, and using a great steel 
fork in the guise of a toothpick. Fancy the first young gentle- 
man living employing such a weapon in such a waj^ ! The most 
elegant Prince of Europe engaged with a two-pronged iron 
fork — the heir of Britannia with a bldent ! The man of genius 
who drew that picture saw little of the society which he satirized 
and amused. Gilra^^ watched public characters as the}" walked 
by the shop in St. James's Street, or passed through the lobby 
of the House of Commons. His studio was a garret, or little 
better ; his place of amusement a tavern-parlor, where his club 
held its nightly sittings over their pipes and sanded floor. You 
could not have society represented by men to whom it was not 
familiar. When Gavarni came to England a few jears since — 
one of the wittiest of men, one of the most brilliant and 
dexterous of draughtsmen — he pubhshed a book of " Les 
Anglais," and his Anglais were all Frenchmen. The e3'e, so 
keen and so long practised to observe Parisian life, could not 
perceive English character. A social painter must be of the 
world which he depicts, and native to the manners which he 
portrays. 

. Now, an}' one who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must 
see that the social pictures which he gives us are authentic. 
What comfortable little drawin2:-rooms and dining-rooms, what 



360 CRITICAL REVIEWS. 

snug libraries we enter ; what fine young-gentlemanly wags they 
are, those beautiful little dandies who wake up gout}^ old grand- 
papa to ring the bell ; who decline aunt's pudding and custards, 
sa3-ing that they will reserve themselves for an anchovy toast 
with the claret ; who talk together in ball-room doors, where 
Fred whispers Charley — pointing to a dear little partner seven 
years old — '•''My dear Charley, she has ver^' much gone off; 
3'OU should have seen that girl last season ! " Look well at 
everything appertaining to the economy of the famous Mr. 
Briggs : how snug, quiet, appropriate all the appointments are ! 
What a comfortable, neat, clean, middle-class house Briggs's 
is (in the Bays water suburb of London, we should guess from 
the sketches of the surrounding scener}") ! What a good stable 
he has, with a loose box for those celebrated hunters which he 
rides ! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast- table 
looks ! What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which 
horrify Mrs. B ! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete 
in all its appointments, and in which he appears tr3'ing on the 
delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire ! 
How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room : 
Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp ; Mamma 
and Grannie with their respective needleworks ; the children 
clustering round a great book of prints — a great book of prints 
such as this before us, which, at this season, must make 
thousands of children happ}' by as many firesides ! The inner 
life of all these people is represented : Leech draws them as 
naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and 
stables. It is 3'our house and mine : we are looking at ever3^- 
body's famil3' circle. Our bo3's coming from school give them- 
selves such airs, the young scapegraces ! our girls, going to 
parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas — a social history 
of London in the middle of the nineteenth century'. As such, 
future students — luck3^ the3^ to have a book so pleasant — will 
regard these pages : even the mutations of fashion the3' may 
follow here if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an 
eye for tailory and millinery as for horse-flesh. How they 
change those cloaks and bonnets. How we have to pay milli- 
ners' bills from 3^ear to 3'ear ! Where are those prodigious 
chatelaines of 1850 which no lad3^ could be without? W^here 
those charming waistcoats, those *' stunning " waistcoats, which 
our 3'oung girls used to wear a few brief seasons back, and 
which cause 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of "La Mode,'* to 
ask Ellen for her tailor's address. 'Gus is a 3'oung warrior by 
this time, very likely facing the enem3'^ at Inkermann ; and 



CRITICAL REVIEWS. 3G1 

pretty Ellen, and that love of a sister of hers, are married and 
happ}^ let us hope, superintending one of those delightful 
nursery scenes which our artist depicts with such tender humor. 
Fortunate artist, indeed ! You see he must have been bred at 
a good public school ; that he has ridden many a good horse 
in his day ; paid, no doubt, out of his own purse for the origi- 
nals of some of those lovely caps and bonnets ; and watched 
paternally the ways, smiles, frolics, and slumbers of his favor- 
ite little people. 

As you look at the drawings, secrets come out of them, — 
private jokes, as it were, imparted to you by the author for 
your special delectation. How remarkably, for instance, has 
Mr. Leech observed the hair-dressers of the present age ! 
Look at '•' Mr. Tongs," whom that hideous old bald woman, 
who ties on her bonnet at the glass, informs that "she has 
used the whole bottle of Balm of California, but her hair comes 
off yet." You can see the bear's-grease not only on Tongs's 
head but on his hands, which he is clapping clammily together. 
Remark him who is telling his client "there is cholera in the 
hair ; " and that luck}^ rogue whom the young lady bids to cut 
off " a long thick piece " — for somebod}^ doubtless. All these 
men are different, and delightfully natural and absurd. AVhy 
should hair-dressing be an absurd profession? 

The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play 
in Mr. Leech's pieces : his admirable actors use them with per- 
fect naturalness. Look at Betty, putting the urn down;, at 
cook, laying her hands on the kitchen table, whilst her police- 
man grumbles at the cold meat. They are cook's and house- 
maid's hands without mistake, and not without a certain beaut}' 
too. The bald old lady, who is tying her bonnet at Tongs's, 
has hands which you see are trembhng. Watch the fingers of 
the two old harridans who are talking scandal : for what long 
years past they have pointed out holes in their neighbors' 
dresses and mud on their flounces. " Here's a go! I've lost 
my diamond ring." As the dustman utters this pathetic cry, 
and looks at his hand, you burst out laughing. These are 
among the little points of humor. One could indicate hun- 
dreds of such as one turns over the pleasant pages. 

There is a little snob or gent, whom we all of us know, who 
wears Uttle tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and panta- 
loons, smokes cigars on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane 
in the streets, struts about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (Mrs. 
S. an immense woman, whom Snob nevertheless bullies), who 
is a favorite abomination of Leech, and pursued by that savage 



3G2 CHITICAL REVIEWS. 

humorist into a thousand of his haunts. There he is, choosing 
waistcoats at the tailor's — such waistcoats ! Yonder he is 
giving a shilUng to the sweeper who calls him "Capting;" 
now he is offering a paletot to a huge giant who is going out 
in the rain. They don't know their own pictures, very likely- ; 
if they did, they would haA^e a meeting, and thirty or forty of 
them would be deputed to thrash Mr. Leech. One feels a pity 
for the poor little bucks. In a minute or two, when we close 
this discourse and walk the streets, we shall see a dozen such. 

Ere we shut the desk up, just one word to point out to the 
unwar}^ specially' to note the backgrounds of landscapes in 
Leech's drawings — homely drawings of moor and wood, and 
seashore and London street — the scenes of his little dramas. 
Thej^ are as excellently true to nature as the actors themselves ; 
our respect for the genius and humor which invented both in- 
creases as we look and look again at the designs. May we 
have more of them ; more pleasant Christmas volumes, over 
which we and our children can laugh together. Can we hav« 
too much of truth, and fun, and beauty, and kindness? 



THE END. 



THE FOUR GEORGES: 



SKETCHES OF MANNEES, MOEALS, COUET AND 

TOWN LIFE. 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 



A VERY few years since, I knew familiarly a lady, who had 
been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been 
patted on the head b}^ George I. This lady had knocked at 
Dr. Johnson's door ; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful 
Georgina of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig society of 
the reign of George III. ; had known the Duchess of Queens- 
berry, the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young 
beauty of the court of Queen Anne. I often thought as I took 
my kind old friend's hand, how with it I held on to the old 
society of wits and men of the world. I could travel back for 
seven score years of time — have glimpses of Brummell, Selwyn, 
Chesterfield, and the men of pleasure ; of Walpole and Conwa}' ; 
of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith ; of North, Chatham, New- 
castle ; of the fair maids of honor of George II.'s court ; of the 
German retainers of George I.'s : where Addison was secretary 
of state ; where Dick Steele held a place ; whither the great 
Marlborough came with his fier}^ spouse ; when Pope, and Swift, 
and Bolingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a societ}'^ so vast, 
busy, brilliant, it is impossible in four brief chapters to give a 
complete notion ; but we may peep here and there into that 
b3'gone world of the Georges, see what they and their courts 
were like ; glance at the people round about them ; look at past 
manners, fashions, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. 
I have to say thus much by way of preface, because the subject 
of these lectures has been misunderstood, and I have been 
taken to task for not having given grave historical treatises, 
which it never was my intention to attempt. Not about battles, 
about politics, about statesmen and measures of state, did I 
ever think to lecture you : but to sketch the manners and life of 



4 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

the old world ; to amuse for a few hours with'talk about the old 
society ; and, with the result of maii}^ a day's and night's pleas- 
ant reading, to try and while awaj' a few winter evenings for 
my hearers. 

Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wit- 
tenberg, was Duke Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William 
of Liineburg, was the progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian 
house at present reigning in Great Britain. Duke William held 
his court at Celle, a little town of ten thousand people that lies 
on the railwa}' line between Hamburg and Hanover, in the midst 
of great plains of sand, upon the river AUer. When Duke 
William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a 
great brick church, which he sedulously frequented, and in 
which he and others of his house lie buried. He was a very 
religious lord, and was called William the Pious b}^ his small 
circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate deprived him 
both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the 
good Duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid 
his musicians pla}^ the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks 
of a descendant of his, two hundred years afterwards, blind, 
old, and lost of wits, singing Handelin Windsor Tower. 

William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters 
and seven sons, who, as the property left among them was 
small, drew lots to determine which one of them should marry, 
and continue the stout race of the Guelphs. The lot fell on 
Duke George, the sixth brother. The others remained single, 
or contracted left-handed marriages after the princely fashion 
of those days. It is a queer picture — that of the old Prince 
d3'ing in his little wood-built capital, and his seven sons tossing 
up which should inherit and transmit the crown of Brentford. 
Duke George, the lucky prizeman, made the tour of Europe, 
during which he visited the court of Queen Elizabeth ; and in 
the 3^ear 1617, came back and settled at Zell, with a wife out 
of Darmstadt. His remaining brothers all kept their house at 
Zell, for economj^'s sake. And presently, in due course, they 
all died — all the honest Dukes ; Ernest, and Christian, and 
Augustus, and Magnus, and George, and John — and they are 
buried in the brick church of Brentford yonder, b}^ the sandy 
banks of the Aller. 

Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our 
Dukes in Zell. " When the trumpeter on the tower has blown," 
Duke Christian orders — viz. at nine o'clock in the morning, 
and four in the evening — every one must be present at meals, 










GEORGE I. 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 5 

and those who are not must go without. None of the servants, 
unless it be a knave who has been ordered to ride out, shall eat 
or drink in the kitchen or cellar ; or, without special leave, 
fodder his horses at the Prince's cost. When the meal is 
served in the court-room, a page shall go round and bid every 
one be quiet and orderl}', forbidding all cursing, swearing, and 
rudeness ; all throwing about of bread, bones, or roast, or 
pocketing of the same. Every morning, at seven, the squires 
shall have their morning soup, along with which, and dinner, 
they shall be served with their under-drink — every morning, 
except Friday morning, when there was sermon, and no drink. 
Every evening the\' shall have their beer, and at night their 
sleep-drink. The butler is especially warned not to allow noble 
or simple to go into the cellar : wine shall onl^' be served at the 
Prince's or councillors' table ; and every Monday, the honest 
old Duke Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the 
expenses in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bake- 
house and stable, made out. 

Duke George, the marr3ing Duke, did not stop at home to 
partake of the beer and wine, and the sermons. He went 
about fighting wherever there was profit to be had. He served 
as general in the arm}^ of the circle of Lower Saxony, the 
Protestant arm}- ; then he went over to the Emperor, and 
fought in his armies in German}^ and Italy ; and when Gus- 
tavus Adolphus appeared in Germany, George took service as 
a Swedish general, and seized the Abbe}' of Hildesheim, as his 
share of the plunder. Here, in the 3'ear 1641, Duke George 
died, leaving four sons behind him, from the 3'oungest of whom 
descend our royal Geoi'ges. 

Under these children of Duke George, the old God-fearing, 
simple wa3's of Zell appear to have gone out of mode. The 
second brother was constanth' visiting Venice, and leading a 
J0II3', wicked life there. It was the most jovial of all places at 
the end of the seventeenth centur3^ ; and mihtary men, after a 
campaign, rushed thither, as the warriors of the Allies rushed 
to Paris in 1814, to gamble, and rejoice, and partake of all 
sorts of godless delights. This Prince, then, loving Venice 
and its pleasures, brought Italian singers and dancers back 
with him to quiet old Zell ; and, worse still, demeaned himself 
by marrying a French lady of birth quite inferior to his own 
— Eleanor d'Olbreuse, from whom our Queen is descended. 
Eleanor had a pretty daughter, M'ho inherited a great fortune, 
which inflamed her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a 



6 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

desire to many her ; and so, with her beautj^ and her riches, 
she came to a sad end. 

It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George 
divided his territories amongst them, and how, finalh^, they 
came into possession of the son of the 3'oungest of the four. 
In this generation the Protestant faith was ver}' near!}' extin- 
guished in the famil}^ : and then where should we in England 
have gone for a king? The third brother also took deUght in 
Italy, where the priests converted him and his Protestant 
chaplain too. Mass was said in Hanover once more ; and 
Italian soprani piped their Latin rh} mes in place of the hj'mns 
which William the Pious and Dr. Luther sang. Louis XIV. 
gave this and other converts a splendid pension. Crowds of 
Frenchmen and brilliant French fashions came into his court. 
It is incalculable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. 
Every prince imitated the French King, and had his Versailles, 
his Wilhelmshohe or Ludwigslust ; his court and its splendors ; 
his gardens laid out with statues ; his fountains, and water- 
works, and Tritons ; his actors, and dancers, and singers, and 
fiddlers ; his harem, with its inhabitants : his diamonds and 
duchies for these latter ; his enormous festivities, his gaming- 
tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week 
long, for which the people paid with their mone}^ when the 
poor wretches had it ; with their bodies and ver}' blood when 
they had none ; being sold in thousands bj^ theif lords and 
masters, who ga3ly dealt in soldiers, staked a regiment upon 
the red at the gambling-table ; swapped a battalion against a 
dancing-girl's diamond necklace ; and, as it were, pocketed 
their people. 

As one views Europe, through contemporar}' books of travel 
in the earl}^ part of the last century, the landscape is awful — 
wretched wastes, beggarly and plundered ; half-burned cottages 
and trembling peasants gathering piteous harvests ; gangs of 
such tramping along with ba3'onets behind them, and corporals 
with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks. By 
these passes my lord's gilt carriage floundering through the 
ruts, as he swears at the postilions, and toils on to the Residenz. 
Hard by, but away from the noise and brawling of the citizens 
and bu3^ers, is Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or 
Versailles — it scared}^ matters which, — near to the city, shut 
out bj'^ woods from the beggared country, the enormous, hide- 
ous, gilded, monstrous marble place, where the Prince is, and 
the Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and the 
forest where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 7 

death to them to touch a feather) ; and the jolly hunt sweeps 
by with its uniform of crimson and gold ; and the Prince gallops 
ahead puffing his royal horn ; and his lords and mistresses ride 
after him ; and the stag is pulled down ; and the grand hunts- 
man gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles ; and 'tis 
time the Court go home to dinner ; and our noble traveller, it 
may be the Baron of PoUnitz, or the Count de Konigsmarck, or 
the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession gleam- 
ing through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens to the 
inn, and sends his noble name to the marshal of the Court. 
Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and gold, or pink 
and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by the 
chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly Prince, and the 
gracious Princess ; and is presented to the chief lords and 
ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at Faro, where he 
loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a German 
court, you ma}^ add not a little drunkenness to this picture of 
high life ; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see 
out of 3"Our palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, 
misery is lying outside ; hunger is stalking about the bare 
villages, listlessl}^ following precarious husbandrj^ ; ploughing 
stony fields with starved cattle ; or fearfully taking in scanty 
harvests. Augustus is fat and joll}' on his throne ; he can 
knock down an ox, and eat one almost ; his mistress, Aurora 
von Konigsmarck, is the loveliest, the wittiest creature ; his 
diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and 
his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis 
the Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances re- 
spectfull}^ and mark him eying Madame de Fontanges or 
Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he 
passes through the great gallery where Villars and Vendome, 
and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. Can 
Court be more splendid ; nobles and knights more gallant and 
superb; ladies more lovely? A grander monarch, or a more 
miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you can- 
not look on. Let us bear both the ne ^ypes in mind, if we wish 
to estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and 
the chivalry? Yes! Remember the grace and beauty, tlie 
splendor and lofty politeness ; the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy, 
where the French line bids the gentleman of the English guard 
to fire first ; the noble constancy of the old King and Villars his 
general, who fits out the last army with the last crown-piece 
from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or conquer 
for France at Denain. But round all that royal splendor lies a 



8 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

nation enslaved and ruined : there are people robbed of their 
rights — communities laid waste — faith, justice, commerce 
trampled upon, and wellnigh destr03'ed — nay, in the very cen- 
tre of roj^alty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime 
and shame ! It is but to a sill}^ harlot that some of the noblest 
gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the world, are 
bowing down ; it is the price of a miserable province that the 
King ties in diamonds round his mistress's white neck. In the 
first half of the last century, I say, this is going on all Europe 
over. Saxon}^ is a waste as well as Picardy or Artois ; and 
Versailles is onh^ larger and not worse than Herrenhausen. 

It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate 
match which bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon 
us Britons. Nine 3'ears after Cliarles Stuart lost his head, his 
niece Sophia, one of many children of another luckless de- 
throned sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married Ernest Augus- 
tus of Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of the 
three kingdoms in her scant}' trousseau. 

One of the handsomest, the most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, 
accomplished of women, was Sophia, daughter of poor Fred- 
erick, the winter king of Bohemia. The other daughters of 
lovely, unhapp3^ Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic 
Church ; this one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot say 
faithful to the Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted no 
other. An agent of the French King's, Gourville, a convert 
himself, strove to bring her and her husband to a sense of the 
truth ; and tells us that he one da}' asked Madame the Duchess 
of Hanover, of what religion her daughter was, then a pretty 
girl of thirteen years old. The duchess replied that the princess 
was of no religion as yet. They were waiting to know of what 
religion her husband would be, Protestant or Catholic, before 
instructing her ! And the Duke of Hanover having heard all 
Gourville's proposal, said that a change would be advantageous 
to his house, but that he himself was too old to change. 

This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how 
to shut them upon occasion, and was blind to many faults which 
it appeared that her husband the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke 
of Hanover committed. He loved to take his pleasure like 
other sovereigns — was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the 
bottle ; liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him ; 
and we read how he jovially sold 6,700 of his Hanoverians to 
the seigniory of Venice. They went bravely off to the Morea, 
under command of Ernest's son. Prince Max, and only 1,400 of 
them evei came home again. The German princes sold a good 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 9 

deal of this kind of stock. You ma^' remember how George 
III.'s Government piircliased Hessians, and the use we made of 
them during the War of Independence. 

The ducats Duke Ernest got for his sokliers he spent in a 
series of the most brilliant entertainments. Nevertheless, the 
jovial Prince was economical, and kept a stead}' eye upon his own 
interests. He achieved the electoral dignit}- for himself: he 
married his eldest son George to his beautiful cousin of Zell ; 
and sending his sons out in command of armies to fight — now 
on this side, now on that — he lived on, taking his pleasure, 
and scheming his schemes, a merr}', wise prince enough, not, 
I fear, a moral prince, of which kind we shall have but very few 
specimens in the course of these lectures. 

Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom 
were scapegraces, and rebelled against the parental system of 
primogeniture and non-division of property which the Elector 
ordained. " Gustchen," the Electress writes about her second 
son : — " Poor Gus is thrust out, and his fatlier will give him 
no more keep. I laugh in the day, and cry all night about it ; 
for I am a fool with my children." Three of the six died fight- 
ing against Turks, Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, 
revolted, fled to Rome, leaving an agent behind him, whose 
head was taken off. The daughter, of whose earl}' education we 
have made mention, was married to the Elector of Brandenburg, 
and so her religion settled finall}^ on the Protestant side. 

A niece of the Electress Sophia — who had been made to 
change her religion, and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of 
the French King ; a woman whose honest heart was always with 
her friends and dear old Deutschland, though her fat little body 
was confined at Paris, or Marly, or Versailles — has left us, in 
her enormous correspondence (part of which has been printed 
in German and French), recollections of the Electress, and of 
George her son. EKzabeth Charlotte was at Osnaburg when 
George was born (1660). She narrowly escaped a whipping 
for being in the way on that auspicious da3\ She seems not to 
have liked little George, nor George grown up ; and represents 
him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent he may have 
been: not a jolly prince like his father before him, but a pru- 
dent, quiet, selfish potentate, going his own way, managing his 
own affairs, and understanding his own interests remarkably 
well. 

In his father's lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover 
forces of 8,000 or 10,000 men, George served the Emperor, on 
the Danube against Turks, at the siege of Vienna, in Italy, and 






10 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

on the Rhine. When he succeeded to the Electorate, he han- 
dled its affairs with great prudence and dexterity. He was very 
much liked by his people of Hanover. He did not show his 
feelings much, but he cried heartily on leaving them ; as they 
used for joy when he came back. He showed an uncommon 
prudence and coolness of behavior when he came into his king- 
dom ; exhibiting no elation ; reasonabl}^ doubtful whether he 
should not be turned out some day ; looking upon himself only 
as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. 
James's and Hampton Court ; plundering, it is true, somewhat, 
and dividing amongst his German followers ; but what could be 
expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at 
so man}'^ ducats per head, and make no scruple in so disposing 
of them? I fancy a considerable shrewdness, prudence, and 
even moderation in his wa3's. The German Protestant was a 
cheaper, and better, and kinder king than the Catholic Stuart 
in whose chair he sat, and so far loyal to England, that he let 
England govern herself. 

Having these lectures in view, I made it my business to visit 
that ugly cradle in which our Georges were nursed. The old 
town of Hanover must look still pretty much as in the time 
when George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of Her- 
renhausen are scarce changed since the day when the stout old 
Electress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding 
but by a few weeks to the tomb James II. 's daughter, whose 
death made wa}' for the Brunswick Stuarts in England. 

The first two royal Georges, and their father, Ernest Augus- 
tus, had quite royal notions regarding marriage; and Louis 
XIV. and Charles II. scarce distinguished themselves more at 
Versailles or St. James's, than these German sultans in their 
little city on the banks of the Leine. You may see at Herren- 
hausen the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and 
performed masques, and sang before the Elector and his sons. 
There are the very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering 
through the branches, still grinning and piping their ditties of 
no tone, as in the days when painted nymphs hung garlands 
round them ; appeared under their leafy arcades with gilt 
crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns; descended from "ma- 
chines " in the guise of Diana or Minerva ; and delivered im- 
mense allegorical compliments to the princes returned home 
from the campaign. 

That was a curious state of morals and politick in Europe ; 
a queer consequence of the triumph of the monarchical prin- 
ciple. Feudalism was beaten down. The nobility, in its 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 11 

quarrels with the crown, had pretty well succumbed, and the 
monarch was all in all. He became almost divine : the proud- 
est and most ancient gentry of the land did menial service for 
him. Who should carry Louis XIV. 's candle when he went to 
bed? what prince of the blood should hold the king's shirt 
when his Most Christian Majesty changed that garment? — the 
French memoirs of the seventeenth century are full of such 
details and squabbles. The tradition is not yet extinct in 
Europe. Any of you who were present, as myriads were, at 
that splendid pageant, the opening of our Crystal Palace in 
London, must have seen two noble lords, great oflScers of the 
household, with ancient pedigrees, with embroidered coats, and 
stars on their breasts and wands in their hands, walking back- 
wards for near the space of a mile, while the royal procession 
made its progress. Shall we wonder — shall we be angry — 
shall we laugh at these old-world ceremonies ? View them as 
5 ou will, according to your mood ; and with scorn or with 
respect, or with anger and sorrow, as your temper leads you. 
Up goes Gesler's hat upon the pole. Salute that symbol of 
sovereignty with heartfelt awe ; or with a sulky shrug of acqui- 
escence, or with a grinning obeisance ; or with a stout rebellious 
No — clap your own beaver down on your pate, and refuse to 
doflf it to that spangled velvet and flaunting feather. I make 
no comment upon the spectators' behavior ; all I say is, that 
Gesler's cap is still up in the market-place of Europe, and not 
a few folks are still kneeling to it. 

Put clumsy, high Dutch statues in place of the marbles of 
Versailles : fancy Herrenhausen waterworks in place of those 
of Marly : spread the tables with Schweinskopf, Specksuppe, 
Leberkuchen, and the like delicacies, in place of the French cui- 
sine ; and fancy Frau vqn Kielmansegge dancing with Count 
Kammerjunker Quirini, or singing French songs with the most 
awful German accent : imagine a coarse Versailles, and we 
have a Hanover before us. "I am now got into the region of 
beauty," writes Mary Wortley, from Hanover in 1716; "all 
the women have literall}^ rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and 
necks, jet e^'ebrows, to which may generally be added coal- 
black hair. These perfections never leave them to the day of 
their death, and have a very fine effect by candlelight ; but I 
could wish they were handsome with a little variety. They 
resemble one another as Mrs. Salmon's Court of Great Britain, 
and are in as much danger of melting away by too nearly ap- 
proaching the fire." The sly Mary Wortley saw this painted 
seragHo of the first George at Hanover, the 3'ear after his 



,-.*« 



12 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

accession to the British throne. There were great doings and 
feasts there. Here Lady Mary saw George II. too. "I can 
tell you, without flatterj^ or partiality," she says, " that our 
young prince has all the accomplishments that it is possible to 
have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, 
and a something so very engaging in his behavior that needs 
not the acl vantage of his rank to appear charming." I find 
elsewhere similar paneg} rics upon Frederick Prince of Wales, 
George II. 's son; and upon George III., of course, and upon 
George IV. in an eminent degree. It was the rule to be 
dazzled by princes, and people's eyes winked quite honestly at 
that ro^'al radiance. 

The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous — pretty 
well paid, as times went ; above all, paid with a regularity 
which few other European courts could boast of. Perhaps 3'ou 
will be amused to know how the Electoral Court was comi- 
posed. There were the princes of the house in the first class ; 
in the second, the single field-marshal of the army (the con- 
tingent was 18,000, Pollnitz says, and the Elector had other 
14,000 troops in his pa}'). Then follow, in due order, the 
authorities civil and military, the working privy councillors, the 
generals of cavalry and infantry', in the third class ; the high 
chamberlain, high marshals of the court, high masters of the 
horse, the major-generals of cavalr^^ and infantrj^, in the fourth 
class ; down to the majors, the hoQunkers or pages, the secre- 
taries or assessors, of the tenth class, of whom all were noble. 

We find the master of the horse had 1,090 thalers of pay ; 
the high chamberlain, 2,000 — a thaler being about three shil- 
lings of our mone3^ There were two chamberlains, and one 
for the Princess ; five gentlemen of the chamber, and five 
gentlemen ushers ; eleven pages and personages to educate 
these 3'oung noblemen — such as a governor, a preceptor, a 
fecht-meister, or fencing master, and a dancing ditto, this latter 
with a handsome salar}^ of 400 thalers. There were three body 
and court physicians, with 800 and 500 thalers ; a court barber, 
600 thalers ; a court organist ; two musikanten ; four French 
fiddlers ; twelve trumpeters, and a bugler ; so that there was 
plentj^ of music, profane and pious, in Hanover. There were 
ten chamber waiters, and twenty-four lackeys in liver}' ; a 
maitre-d'hotel, and attendants of the kitchen ; a French cook ; 
a bod}^ cook ; ten cooks ; six cooks' assistants ; two Braten 
masters, or masters of the roast — (one fancies enormous spits 
turning slowly, and the honest masters of the roast beladling 
the dripping) ; a pastry-baker ; a pie-baker ; and finallv, three 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 13 

scullions, at the modest remuneration of eleven tlialers. In 
the sugar-chamber there were four pastry-cooks (for the ladies, 
no doubt) ; seven officers in the wine and beer cellars ; four 
bread-bakers ; and five men in the plate-room. There were 
600 horses in the Serene stables — no less than twenty teams 
of princel}^ carriage horses, eight to a team ; sixteen coachmen ; 
fourteen postilions ; nineteen ostlers ; thirteen helps, besides 
smiths, carriage-masters, horse-doctors, and other attendants 
of the stable. The female attendants were not so numerous : 
I grieve to find but a dozen or fourteen of them about 
the Electoral premises, and only two washerwomen for all the 
Court. These functionaries had not so much to do as in tlie 
present age. I own to finding a pleasure in these small-beer 
chronicles. I like to people the old world, with its everj'-day 
figures and inhabitants — not so much with heroes fighthig 
immense battles and inspiring repulsed battalions to engage ; 
or statesmen locked up in darkling cabinets and meditating 
ponderous laws or dire conspiracies — as with people occupied 
with their every-day work or pleasure : my lord and lad}' hunt- 
ing in the forest, or dancing in the Court, or bowing to their 
Serene Highnesses as they pass in to dinner ; John Cook and his 
procession bringing the meal from the kitchen ; the joll}' butlers 
bearing in the flagons from the cellar ; the stout coachman 
driving the ponderous gilt wagon, with eight cream-colored 
horses in housings of scarlet velvet and morocco leather ; a 
postilion on the lea'ders, and a pair or a half-dozen of running 
footmen scudding along by the side of the vehicle, with coni- 
cal caps, long silver-headed maces, which the}^ poised as they 
ran, and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gokl. 
I fancy the citizens' wives and their daughters looking out from 
the balconies ; and the burghers over their beer and muram, 
rising up, cap in hand, as the cavalcade passes through the 
town with torch-bearers, trumpeters blowing their lust}' cheeks 
out, and squadrons of jack-booted lifeguardsmen, girt with 
shining cuirasses, and bestriding thundering chargers, escort- 
ing his Highness's coach from Hanover to Herrenhausen ; or 
halting, mayhap, at Madame Platen's country-house of Mon- 
plaisir, which lies half-way between the summer-palace and the 
Residenz. 

In the good old times of which I am treating, whilst com 
mon men were driven off by herds, and sold to fight the Em 
peror's enemies on the Danube, or to bayonet King Louis's 
troops of common men on the Rhine, noblemen passed from 
court to court, seeking service with one prince or the other. 



14 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

and naturally taking command of the ignoble vulgar of soldiery 
which battled and died almost without hope of promotion. 
Noble adventurers travelled from court to court in search of 
employment ; not merel}^ noble males, but noble females too ; 
and if these latter were beauties, and obtained the favorable 
notice of princes, they stopped in the courts, became the favor- 
ites of their Serene or Royal Highnesses ; and received great 
sums of money and splendid diamonds ; and were promoted 
to be duchesses, marchionesses, and the like ; and did not fall 
much in public esteem for the manners in which the}^ won their 
advancement. In this way Mdlle. de Querouailles, a beautiful 
French lady, came to London on a special mission of Louis 
XIV., and was adopted by our grateful country and sovereign, 
and figured as Duchess of Portsmouth. In this way the beauti- 
ful Aurora of Konigsmarck travelling about found favor in the 
ej'es of Augustus of Saxony, and became the mother of Marshal 
Saxe, who gave us a beating at Fontenoy ; and in this manner 
the lovely sisters Elizabeth and Melusina of Meissenbach (who 
had actually been driven out of Paris, whither they had travelled 
on a like errand, by the wise jealousy of the female favorite 
there in possession) journe3'ed to Hanover, and became favor- 
ites of the serene house there reigning. 

That beautiful Aurora von Konigsmarck and her brother are 
wonderful as t3'pes of bj-gone manners, and strange illustrations 
of the morals of old daj^s. The Konigsmarcks were descended 
from an ancient noble family of Brandenburg, a branch of 
which passed into Sweden, where it enriched itself and pro- 
duced several mighty men of valor. 

The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous war- 
rior and plunderer of the Thirty Years' war. One of Hans's 
sons, Otto, appeared as ambassador at the court of Louis XIV., 
and had to make a Swedish speech at his receptiop before the 
Most Christian King. Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, 
but he forgot the speech, and what do you think he did? Far 
from being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish 
Catechism to his Most Christian Majesty and his court, not one 
of whom understood his lingo with the exception of his own 
suite, who had to keep their gravit}' as best they might. 

Otto's nephew, Aurora's elder brother, Carl Johann of 
Konigsmarck, a favorite of Charles 11. , a beaut}^, a dandy, a 
warrior, a rascal of more than ordinary mark, escaped, but 
deserved being hanged in England, for the murder of Tom 
Thynne of Longleat. He had a little brother in London with 
li'iMi at Vi\^ 111)'! — as G"reat a beautv, as s:i'eat a dandv. as 



GEORGE THE F[RST. 15 

great a villain as his elder. This lad, Philip of Konigsmarek, 
also was implicated in the affair ; and perhaps it is a pity he 
ever brought his prett}' neck out of it. He went over to Han- 
over, and was soon appointed colonel of a regiment of H. E. 
Highness's dragoons. In earl}^ life he had been page in the 
court of Celle ; and it was said that he and the pretty Princess 
Sophia Dorothea, who by this time was married to her cousin 
George the Electoral Prince, had been in love with each other 
as children. Their loves were now to be renewed, not inno- 
centl3', and to come to a fearful end. 

A biograpliy of the wife of George I., b^^ Dr. Doran, has 
lately appeared, and I confess I am astounded at the verdict 
which that writer has delivered, and at his acquittal of this 
most unfortunate lady. That she had a cold selfish libertine 
of a husband no one can doubt ; but that the bad husband had 
a bad wife is equally clear. She was married to her cousin for 
money or convenience, as all princesses were married. She 
was most beautiful, livelj', wdtt}", accomplished : his brutalit}- 
outraged her : his silence and coldness chilled lier : his cruelt}" 
insulted her. No wonder she did not love him. How could 
love be a part of the compact in such a marriage as that? 
With this unlucky heart to dispose of, the poor creature be- 
stowed it on Philip of Konigsmarek, than whom a greater 
scamp does not walk the histor3' of the seventeenth century. A 
hundi'ed and eighty j^ears after the fellow was thrust into his 
unknown grave, a Swedish professor lights upon a box of let- 
ters in the University Library at Upsala, written b}' Philip and 
Dorothea to each other, and telling their miserable story. 

The bewitching Konigsmarek had conquered two female 
hearts in Hanover. Besides the Electoral Prince's lovely young 
wife Sophia Dorothea, Philip had inspired a passion in a hideous 
old court lady, the Countess of Platen. The Princess seems 
to have pursued him with the fidelity of many years. Heaps 
of letters followed him on his campaigns, and were answered 
by the daring adventurer. The Princess wanted to fly with 
him ; to quit her odious husband at an}' rate. vShe besought 
her parents to receive her back ; had a notion of taking refuge 
in France and going over to the CathoHc religion ; had abso- 
lutely packed her jewels for flight, and very likely arranged its 
details with her lover, in that last long night's interview, after 
which Philip of Konigsmarek was seen no more. 

Konio;smarck, inflamed with drink — there is scarcely any 
vice of which, according to his own showing, this gentleman 
was not a practitioner — had boasted at a supper at Dresden 



16 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

of his intimac}^ with the two Hanoverian ladies, not only with 
the Princess, but with another lady powerful in Hanover. The 
Countess Platen, the old favorite of the Elector, hated the 
3"oung Electoral Princess. The young lady had a lively wit, 
and constantly made fun of the old one. The Princess's jokes 
were conveyed to the old Platen just as our idle words are 
carried about at this present da}^ : and so they both hated each 
other. 

The characters in the traged}', of which the curtain was now 
about to fall, are about as dark a set as eye ever rested on. 
There is the jolly Prince, shrewd, selfish, scheming, loving his 
cups and his ease (I think his good-humor makes the tragedy 
but darker) ; his Princess, who speaks little but observes all ; 
his old painted Jezebel of a mistress ; his son, the Electoral 
Prince, shi-ewd too, quiet, selfish, not ill-humored, and gener- 
all}' silent, except when goaded into fury by the intolerable 
tongue of his lovely wife ; there is poor Sophia Dorothea, with 
her coquetry and her wrongs, and her passionate attachment 
to her scamp of a lover, and her wild imprudences, and her 
mad artifices, and her insane fidelitj', and her furious jealousy 
regarding her husband (though she loathed and cheated him), 
and her prodigious falsehoods ; and the confidante, of course, 
into whose hands the letters are slipped ; and there is Lothario, 
finall3% than whom, as I have said, one can't imagine a more 
handsome, wicked, worthless reprobate. 

How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain ! 
How madly true the woman is, and how astoundingly she lies ! 
She has bewitched two or three persons who have taken her 
up, and they won't believe in her wrong. Like Mary of Scot- 
land, she finds adherents ready to conspire for her even in his- 
tory, and people who have to deal with her are charmed, and 
fascinated, and bedevilled. How devotedly Miss Strickland 
has stood by Mary's innocence ! Are there not scores of ladies 
in this audience who persist in it too? Innocent ! I i-emember 
as a boy how a great part}' persisted in declaring Caroline of 
Bruns-wick was a martyred angel. vSo was Helen of Greece 
innocent. She never ran awa}' with Paris, the dangei'ous young 
Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her; and there never 
was any siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard's wife inno- 
cent. She never peeped into the closet where the other wives 
were with their heads off. She never dropped the key, or 
stained it with blood ; and her brothers were quite right in 
finishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute ! Yes, Caroline of 
Brimswick was innocent ; and Madame Laffarge never poi- 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 17 

eoned her husband ; and Marj- of Scotland never blew up hers ; 
and poor Sophia Dorothea was never unfaithful ; and Eve 
never took the apple — it was a cowardh* fabrication of the 
serpent's. 

George Louis has been held up to execration as a murder- 
ous Bluebeard, whereas the Electoral Prince had no share in 
the transaction in which Philip of Konigsmarck was scuffled 
out of this mortal scene. The Prince was absent when the 
catastrophe came. The Princess had had a hundred warnings ; 
mild hints from her husband's parents ; grim remonstrances 
from himself — but took no more heed of this advice than such 
besotted poor wretches do. On the night of Sunda3% the 1st 
of July, 1694, Konigsmarck paid a long visit to the Princess, 
and left her to get ready for flight. Her husband was away 
at Berlin ; her carriages and horses were prepared and readj' 
for the elopement. Meanwhile, the spies of Countess Platen 
had brought the news to their mistress. She went to Ernest 
Augustus, and procured from the Elector an order for the 
arrest of the Swede. On the way by w^hich he was to come, 
four guards were commissioned to take him. He strove to cut 
his way through the four men, and wounded more than one of 
them. They fell upon him; cut him down; and, as he was 
lying wounded on the ground, the Countess, his enemy, whom 
he had betrayed and insulted, came out and beheld him pros- 
trate. He cursed her with his dying lips, and the furious 
woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. He was de- 
spatched presently ; his body burnt the next day ; and all traces 
of the man disappeared. The guards who killed him were 
enjoined silence under severe penalties. The Princess was 
reported to be ill in her apartments, from which she was taken 
in October of the same 3'ear, being then eight-and-twenty years 
old, and consigned to the castle of Ahlden, where she remained 
a prisoner for no less than thirtj'-two years. A separation had 
been pronounced previously between her and her husband. 
She was called henceforth the '^Princess of Ahlden," and her 
silent husband no more uttered her name. 

Four years after the Konigsmarck catastrophe, Ernest Au- 
gustus, the first Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, 
his son, reigned in his stead. Sixteen years he reigned in 
Hanover, after which he became, as we. know. King of Great 
Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faitli. The 
wicked old Countess Platen died in the year 1706. She had 
lost her sight, but nevertheless the legend says that she con- 

2 



18 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

stantly saw Konigsmarck's ghost by her wicked old bed. And 
so there was an end of* her. 

In the year 1700, the little Duke of Gloucester, the last of 
poor Queen Anne's children, died, and the folks of Hanover 
straightway became of prodigious importance in England. The 
Electress Sophia was declared the next in succession to the 
EngHsh throne. George Louis was created Duke of Cambridge ; 
grand deputations were sent over from our country to Deutsch- 
land ; but Queen Anne, whose weak heart hankered after her 
relatives at St. Germains, never could be got to allow her 
cousin, the Elector Duke of Cambridge, to come and pay his 
respects to her Majesty, and take his seat in her House of 
Peers. Had the Queen lasted a month longer ; had the English 
Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and crafty ; 
had the Prince whom the nation loved and pitied been equal 
to his fortune, George Louis had never talked German in St. 
James's Chapel Royal. 

When the crown did come to George Louis he was in no 
hurry about putting it on. He waited at home for a while ; took 
an affecting farewell of his dear Hanover and Hericnhausen ; 
and set out in the most leisurely manner to ascend " the throne 
of his ancestors," as he called it in his first speech to Parha- 
ment. He brought with him a compact body of Germans, 
whose society he loved, and whom he kept round the royal per- 
son. He had his faithful German chamberlains ; his German 
secretaries ; his negroes, captives of his bow and spear in 
Turkish wars ; his two ugly, elderly German favorites, Mes- 
dames of Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, whom he created re- 
spectively Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The 
Duchess was tall, and lean of stature, and hence was irrever- 
ently nicknamed the Maypole. The Countess was a large-sized 
noblewoman, and this elevated personage was denominated the 
Elephant. Both of these ladies loved Hanover and its delights ; 
clung round the linden-trees of the great Herrenhausen avenue, 
and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, 
could not come on account of her debts ; but finding the May- 
pole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and 
slipped out of Hanover, unwieldy as she was. On this the 
Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and followed her 
beloved George Louis,^ One seems to be speaking of Captain 
Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected ; 
the courtiers who came in his train ; the English nobles who 
came to welcome him, and on many of whom the shrewd old 
cynic turned his back — I protest it is a wonderful satirical 




THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF MAELBOROUGH. 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 19 

picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, sa}^ and 
crjdng hurrah for King George ; and yet I can scarce)}' keep my 
countenance, and help laughing at the enormous absurdity of 
this advent ! 

Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the ArchMshop of 
Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his church, with 
Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks 
grinning behind the defender of the faith. Here is my Lord 
Duke of Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of 
all times ; he who betrayed King William — betrayed King 
James II. — betrayed Queen Anne — betra3'ed England to the 
French, the Elector to the Pretender, the Pretender to the 
Elector ; and here are my Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, 
the latter of whom has just tripped up the heels of the former ; 
and if a month's more time had been allowed him, would have 
had King James at Westminster. The great Whig gentlemen 
made their bows and congees with proper decorum and cere- 
mony ; but yonder keen old schemer knows the value of their 
loyalty. " Loyalty," he must think, " as applied to me — it is 
absurd ! There are fift}^ nearer heirs to the throne than I am. 
I am but an accident, and 3'ou fine Whig gentlemen take me for 
your own sake, not for mine. You Tories hate me ; you arch- 
bishop, smirking on your knees, and prating about Heaven, you 
know I don't care a fig for 3'our Thirty-nine Articles, and can't 
understand a word of 3'our stupid sermons. You, m3' Lords Bo- 
lingbroke and Oxford — 3'bu know you were conspiring against 
me a month ago; and 3'ou, my Lord Duke of Marlborough — 
3-ou would sell me or any man else, if you found 3'our advantage 
in it. Come, m3' good Melusina, come, m3' honest Sophia, let 
us go into m3^ private room, and have some ovsters and some 
Rhine wine, and some pipes afterwards : let us make the best 
of our situation ; let us take what we can get, and leave these 
bawling, brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, and cheat, 
in their own wa3^ ! " 

If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the 
losing side, what a fine satirical picture we might have had of 
that general sauve qui pent amongst the Tor3' party ! How mum 
the Tories became; how the House of Lords and House of 
Commons chopped round ; and how decorously the majorities 
welcomed King George ! 

Bolingbroke, making his last speech in the House of Lords, 
pointed out the shame of the peerage, where several lords con- 
curred to condemn in one general vote all that they had ap- 
proved in former parliaments hy many particular resolutions. 



20 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

And so their conduct was shameful. St. John had the best of 
the argument, but the worst of the vote. Bad times were come 
for him. He talked philosophy, and professed innocence. He 
courted retirement, and was ready to meet persecution ; but, 
hearing that honest Mat Prior, who had been recalled from 
Paris, was about to peach regarding the past transactions, the 
philosopher bolted, and took that magnificent head of his out of 
the ugly reach of the axe. Oxford, the lazy- and good-humored, 
had more courage, and awaited the storm at home. He and 
Mat Prior both had lodgings in the Tower, and both brought 
their heads safe out of that dangerous menagerie. When Atter- 
bury was carried off to the same den a few years afterwards, 
and it was asked, what next should be done with him? " Done 
with him? Fling him to the lions," Cadogan said, Marl- 
borough's heutenant. But the British lion of those days did 
not care much for drinking the blood of peaceful peers and 
poets, or crunching the bones of bishops. Only four men were 
executed in London for the rebellion of 1715 ; and twenty- two 
in Lancashire. Above a thousand taken in arms, submitted to 
the King's mercy, and petitioned to be transported to his Majes- 
t3^'s colonies in America. I have heard that their descendants 
took the loyalist side in the disputes which arose sixty years 
after. It is pleasant to find that a friend of ours, worthy Dick 
Steele, was for letting off the rebels with their lives. 

As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the 
speculation is ! We know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen 
came out at Lord Mal-'s summons, mounted the white cockade, 
that has been a flower of sad poetry ever since, and rallied 
round the ill-omened Stuart standard at Braemar. Mar, with 
8,000 men, and but 1,500 opposed to him, might have driven 
the enemy over the Tweed, and taken possession of the whole 
of Scotland ; but that the Pretender's Duke did not venture to 
move when the day was his own. Edinburgh Castle might 
have been in King James's hands ; but that the men who were 
to escalade it stayed to drink his health at the tavern, and ar- 
rived two hours too late at the rendezvous under the castle 
wall. There was sympathy enough in the town — the projected 
attack seems to have been known there — Lord Mahon quotes 
Sinclair's account of a gentleman not concerned, who told Sin- 
clair, that he was in a'house that -evening where eighteen of 
them were drinking, as the facetious landlady said, " powder- 
ing their hair," for the attack on the castle. Suppose they had 
not stopped to powder their hair? Edinburgh Castle, and 
town, and all Scotland were King James's. The north of 




JAMKS TI. 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 21 

England rises, and marches over Baruet Heath upon London. 
Wyndham is up in Somersetshire ; Packington in Worcester- 
shire ; and Vivian in Cornwall. The Elector of Hanover, and 
his hideous mistresses, pack up the plate, and perhaps the 
crown jewels in London, and are off via Harwich and Helvoet- 
slu^'s, for dear old Deutschland. The King — God save him ! 
— lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause ; shouting multi- 
tudes, roaring cannon, the Duke of Mai'lborough weeping tears 
of jo}', and all the bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few 
3'ears, mass is said in St. Paul's ; matins and vespers are sung 
in York Minster ; and Dr. Swift is turned out of his stall and 
deanery house at St. Patrick's, to give place to Father Domi- 
nic, from Salamanca. All these changes were possible then, 
and once thirt}' j'^ears afterwards — all this we might have had, 
but for the pulveris exigui jactu^ that little toss of powder for 
the hair which the Scotch conspirators stopped to take at the 
tavern. 

You understand the distinction I would draw between his- 
tory — of which I do not aspire to be an expounder — and 
manners and life such as these sketches would describe. The 
rebellion breaks out in the north ; its story is before j'ou in a 
hundred volumes, in none more fairl}^ than in the excellent 
narrative of Lord Mahon. The clans are up in Scotland ; Der- 
wentwater, Nithsdale and Forster are in arms in Northumber- 
land — these are matters of history, for which you are referred 
to the due chroniclers. The Guards are set to watch the 
streets, and prevent the people w^earing white roses. I read 
presently of a couple of soldiers almost flogged to death for 
wearing oakboughs in their hats on the 29 th of May — another 
badge of the beloved Stuarts. It is with these we have to do, 
rather than the marches and battles of the armies to which the 
poor fellows belonged — with statesmen, and how they looked, 
and how they Uved, rather than with measures of State, which 
belong to history alone. For example, at the close of the old 
Queen's reign, it is known the Duke of Marlborough left the 
kingdom — after what menaces, after what prayers, lies, bribes 
offered, taken, refused, accepted; after what dark doubling 
and tacking, let history, if she can or dare, say. The Queen 
dead ; who so eager to return as my lord duke ? AVho shouts 
God save the King ! so lustily as the great conqueror of Blen- 
heim and Malplaquet? (By the way, he will send over some 
more money for the Pretender yet, on the sly.) AVho lays his 
hand on his blue ribbon, and lifts his eyes more gracefully to 
heaven than this hero ? He makes a quasi-triumphal entrance 



22 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

into London, by Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt coach — and 
the enormous gilt coach breaks down somewhere b}- Chancer}' 
Lane, and his highness is obliged to get another. There it i« 
we have him. We are with the mob in the crowd, not with the 
great folks in the procession. We are not the Historic Muse, 
but her ladyship's attendant, tale-bearer — valet-de-chambre — 
for whom no man is a hero ; and, as 3'onder one steps from his 
carriage to the next handy conve^'ance, we take the number of 
the hack ; we look all over at his stars, ribbons, embroidery ; 
we think within ourselves, O you unfathomable schemer ! O 
you warrior invincible ! O you beautiful smiUng Judas ! 
What master would you not kiss or betra}' ! What trai- 
tor's head, blackening on the spikes on 3onder gate, ever 
hatched a tithe of the treason which has worked under 3'our 
periwig? 

We have brought our Georges to London cit}', and if we 
would behold its aspect, may sote it in Hogarth's \\\e\y perspec- 
tive of Cheapside, or read of it in a hundred contemporar}^ 
books which paint the manners of that age. Our dear old 
Spectator looks smiling upon the streets, with their innumerable 
signs, and describes them with his charming humor. " Our 
streets are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red 
Lions, not to mention Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armor, with 
other creatures more extraordinary' than an}' in the deserts of 
Africa." A few of these quaint old figures still remain in Lon- 
don town. You may still see there, and over its okl hostel 
in Ludgate Hill, the "Belle Sauvage " to whom the Spectator 
so pleasant!}' alhides in that paper ; and who was, probabl}', 
no other than the sweet American Pocahontas, who rescued 
from death the daring Captain Smith. There is the " Lion's 
Plead," down whose jaws the Spectntor''s own letters were 
passed ; and over a great banker's in Fleet Street, tlie effigy 
of the wallet, which the founder of the firm bore when he came 
into London a countr}' bp}'. People this street, so ornamented, 
with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to 
clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey 
marching before him ; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to 
chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer-book; 
with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remem- 
ber fort}' years ago, as boy in London city, a score of cheery, 
familiar cries that are silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging 
to the chocolate-houses, tapping their snuff'-boxes as they issue 
thence, their periwigs appearing over the red curtains. Fancy 
Saccharissa, beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 23 

and a crowd of soldiers brawling and bustling at the door 
— gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue 
facings, and laced with gold at the seams ; gentlemen of the 
Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the 
garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver ; men of 
the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Hai-ry left 
them, with their ruff and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the King's 
Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass. If he is 
going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded 
by his guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise 
his Majest}' only uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, 
and six yeomen of the guard at the sides of the sedan. The 
officers in waiting follow the King in coaches. It must be 
rather slow work. 

Our Spectator and Tatler are full of delightful glimpses of 
the town life of those da3's. In the company of that charming 
guide, we may go to the opera, the comed}-, the puppet-show, 
the auction, even the cockpit : we can take boat at Temple 
Stairs, and accompan}^ Sir Roger de Coverlej^ and Mr. Spec- 
tator to Spring Garden — it will be called Vauxhall a few 
3'ears hence, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not 
like to step back into the past, and be introduced to Mr. 
Addison? — not the Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq., 
George I.'s Secretary of State, but to the delightful painter of 
contemporarj^ manners ; the man who, when in good-humor 
himself, was the pleasantest companion in all England. I 
should like to go into Lockit's with him, and drink a bowl 
along with Sir R. Steele (who has just been knighted by King 
George, and who does not happen to have an}' money to pay 
his share of the reckoning). I should not care to follow Mr. 
Addison to his secretar3''s office in Whitehall. There w^e get 
into politics. Our business is pleasure, and the town, and the 
coffee-house, and the theatre, and the Mall. Delightful Spec- 
tator ! kind friend of leisure hours ! happy companion ! true 
Christian gentleman ! How much greater, better, 3'ou are than 
the King Mr. Secretary kneels to ! 

You can have foreign testimon}^ about old-world London, if 
3^ou like ; and m}' before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron 
de Pollnitz, will conduct us to it. "A man of sense," says 
he, "or a fine gentleman, is never at a loss for company in 
London, and this is the way the latter passes his time. He 
rises late, puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword at home, 
takes his cane, and goes where he pleases. Tiie park is com- 
monly the place where he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for 



24 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

men of qualit3\ 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries s^ Paris, 
only the park has a certain beaut}' of simplicit}- which cannot 
be described. The grand walk is called the Mall ; is full of 
people at ever}^ hour of the da}', but especially at morning and 
evening, when their Majesties often walk with the royal family, 
who are attended only by a half-dozen yeomen of the guard, 
and permit all persons to walk at the same time with them. 
The ladies and gentlemen always appear in rich dresses, for the 
English, who, twenty years ago, did not wear gold lace but in 
their army, are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the 
French. I speak of persons of quality ; for the citizen still 
contents himself with a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, 
and fine linen. Everybody is w^ell clothed here, and even the 
beggars don't make so ragged an appearance as they do else- 
where." After our friend, the man of quality, has had his morn- 
ing or undress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress, and 
then saunters to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented 
by the persons he would see. " For 'tis a rule with tiie Eng- 
lish to go once a day at least to houses of this sort, where they 
talk of business and news, read the papers, and often look at 
one another without opening their lips. And 'tis very well they 
are so mute : for were they all as talkative as people of other 
nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there would 
be no hearing what one man said where they are so many. The 
chocolate-house in St. James's Street, where I go every morn- 
ing to pass away the time, is always so full that a man can 
scarce turn about in it." 

Delightful as London city was. King George I. Hked to be 
out of it as much as ever, he could ; and when there, passed all 
his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, 
100 years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down 
from St. Paul's, and sighed out, ''Was fur Plunder!" The 
German women plundered ; the German secretaries plundered ; 
the German cooks and intendants plundered ; even Mustapha 
and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. 
Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim. He 
was not a lofty monarch, certainly : he was not a patron of the 
fine arts : but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revengeful, 
he w\as not extravagant. Though a despot in Hanover, he was 
a moderate ruler, in England. His aim was to leave it to itself 
as much as possible, and to live out of it as much as he could. 
His heart was in Hanover. When taken ill on his last journey, 
as he was passing through Holland, he thrust his livid head out 



GEORGE THE FIRST. 25' 

of the coach-window, and gasped out, " Osnaburg, Osnaburg ! " 
He was more than fifty 3'ears of age when he came amongst us ; 
we took him because we wanted him, because he served our 
turn ; we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at 
him. He took our loyalty for what it was worth ; laid hands 
on what money he could ; kept us assuredly from Pop^ery and 
wooden shoes. I, for one, would have been on his side in those 
days. Cynical, and selfish, as he was, he was better than a 
king out of St. Germains with the French King's orders in his 
pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in his train. 

The Fates are supposed to interest themselves about royal 
personages ; and so this one had omens and prophecies specially 
regarding him. He was said to be much disturbed at a prophecy 
that he should die very soon after his wife ; and sure enough, 
pallid Death, having seized upon the luckless Princess in her 
castle of Ahlden, presently pounced upon H. M. King George I., 
in his travelling chariot, on the Hanover road. What postiKon 
can outride that pale horseman? It is said, George promised 
one of his left-handed widows to come to her after death, if 
leave were granted to him to revisit the glimpses of the moon ; 
and soon after his demise, a great raven actually flying or hop- 
ping in at the Duchess of Kendal's window at Twickenham, she 
chose to imagine the king's spirit inhabited these plumes, and 
took special care of her sable visitor. Affecting metempsycho- 
sis — funereal royal bird ! How pathetic is the idea of the 
Duchess weeping over it ! When this chastd addition to our 
English aristocracy died, all her jewels, her plate, her plunder 
went over to her relations in Hanover. I wonder whether her 
heirs took the bird, and whether it is still flapping its wings 
over Herrenhausen? 

The days are over in England of that strange rehgion of 
king-worship, when priests flattered princes in the Temple 
of God ; when servility was held to be ennobUng duty ; when 
beauty and youth tried eagerly for royal favor ; and woman's 
shame was held to be no dishonor. Mended morals and mended 
manners in courts and people, are among the priceless conse- 
quences of the freedom which George I. came to rescjie and 
secure. He kept his compact with his English subjects ; and if 
he escaped no more than other men and monarchs from the 
vices of his age, at least we may thank him for preserving and 
transmitting the liberties of ours. In our free air, royal and 
humble homes have alike been purified ; and Truth, the birth- 
right of high and low among us, which quite fearlessly judges 



26 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

our greatest personages, can onl}' speak of them now in words 
of respect and regard. There are stains in the portrait of the 
first George, and traits in it which none of us need admire ; but, 
among tlie nobler features, are justice, courage, moderation — 
and these we may recognize ere we turn the picture to the 
wall. 




GEOKGE U. 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 



On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen 
might have been perceived galloping along the road from Chel- 
sea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jackboots of the 
period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and ver}' corpulent 
cavalier ; but, by the manner in which he urged his horse, you 
might see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider. Indeed, 
no man loved sport better ; and in the hunting-fields of Norfolk, 
no squire rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ringwood 
and Swecttips more lustil3^ than he who now thundered over 
the Richmond road. 

He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see the 
owner of the mansion. The mistress of the house and her 
ladies, to whom our friend was admitted, said he could not be 
introduced to the master, however pressing the business might 
be. The master was asleep after his dinner ; he always slept 
after his dinner : and woe be to the person who interrupted 
him! Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jackboots put the 
affrighted ladies aside, opened the forbidden door of the bed- 
room, wherein upon the bed lay a little gentleman ; and here 
the eager messenger knelt down in his jackboots. 

He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a strong 
German accent asked who was there, and who dared to disturb 
him? 

" I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messenger. The awak- 
ened sleeper hated Sir Robert Walpole. " I have the honor to 
announce to your Majest}' that your royal father, King George I., 
died at Osnaburg, on Saturday last, the 10th inst." 

'•'• Dat is one big lie!'' roared out his sacred Majesty King 
George II. : but Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from 



28 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

that cla}' until three-ancl-thirtj- j^ears after, George, the second 
of the name, ruled over England. 

How the King made away with his father's will under the 
astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; how he was 
a choleric little sovereign ; how he shook his fist in the face of 
his father's courtiers ; how he kii-ked his coat and wig about in- 
liis rages, and called everyboch' thief, liar, rascal, with whom 
he ditfered : vou will read in all the historv books ; and how he 
speedily and shrewdh' reconciled himself with the bold minister, 
whom he had hated during his father's life, and by whom he 
w'as served during fifteen 3ears of his own with admirable pru- 
dence, fidelit}', and success. But for Sir Robert Walpole, we 
should have had the Pretender back again. But for his obstinate 
love of peace, we should have had wars, which the nation was 
not strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his 
resolute counsels and good-humored resistance, we might have 
had German despots attem[)ting a Hanoverian regimen over us : 
we should have had revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous 
misrule, in place of a quarter of a century of peace, freedom, 
and material prosperity-, such as the country never enjoyed, 
until that corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, 
that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, 
patriot, and statesman governed it. In religion he was little 
better than a heathen ; cracked ribald jokes at bigwigs and 
bishops, and laughed at High Church and Low. In private life 
the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures : he passed his 
Sundays tippling at Richmond ; and his holydays bawling after 
dogs, or boozing at Houghton with boors over beef and punch. 
He cared for letters no more than his master did : he judged 
human nature so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that 
lie was right, and that men could be corrupted b}' means so 
base. But, with his hireling House of Commons, he defended 
liberty for us ; with his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. 
There were parsons at Oxford as double-dealing and dangerous 
as any priests out of Rome, and he routed them both. He gave 
Englishmen no conquests, but he gave them peace, and ease, 
and freedom ; the three per cents nearly at par ; and wheat at 
five and six and twenty shillings a quarter. 

It was lucky for us that our first Georges were not more 
high-minded men ; especially fortunate that they loved Hanover 
so much as to leave England to have her own wa}'. Our chief 
troubles began when we got a king who gloried in the name of 
Briton, and, being born in the country, proposed to rule it. 
He was no more fit to govern England than his grandfather and 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 29 

great-grandfather, who did not tr}'. It was righting itself dur- 
ing their occupation. The dangerous, noble old spirit of cava- 
lier lo3^alty was d} ing out ; the statel}- old English High Church 
was empt3'ing itself: the questions dropping which, on one side 
and the other; — the side of loyalty, prerogative, church, and 
king ; — the side of right, truth, civil and religious freedom, — 
had set generations of brave men in arms. By the time when 
George III. came to the throne, the combat between loyalty 
and libert^^ was come to an end ; and Charles Edward, old, 
tipsy, and childless, was dying in Ital}'. 

Those who are curious about European Court historj- of the 
last age know the memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and 
what a Court was that of Berlin, where George II. 's cousins 
ruled sovereign, Frederick the Great's father knocked down his 
sons, daughters, officers of state ; he kidnapped big men all 
Europe over to make grenadiers of: his feasts, his parades, his 
wine-parties, his tobacco-parties, are all described. Jonathan 
Wikl the Great in language, pleasures, and behavior, is scarcely 
more delicate than this German sovereign. Louis XV., his life, 
and reign, and doings, are told in a thousand French memoirs. 
Our George 11. , at least, was not a worse king than his neigh- 
bors. He claimed and took the royal exemption from doing 
rio'ht which sovereio'ns assumed. A dull little man of low 
tastes he appears to us in England ; yet HervcN^ tells us that 
this choleric prince was a great sentimentahst, and that his 
letters — of which he wrote prodigious quantities — were quite 
dangerous in their powers of fascination. He kept his senti- 
mentalities for his Germans and his queen. With ns English, 
he never chose to be familiar. He has been accused of avarice, 
3'et he did not give much mone3% and did not leave much behind 
him. He did not love the fine arts, but he did not pretend to 
love them. He was no more a hypocrite about religion than 
his father. He judged men by a low standard ; 3'et, with such 
men as were near him, was he wrong in judging as he did? He 
readih^ detected lying and flatter3', and liars and flatterers were 
perforce his companions. Had he been more of a dupe he 
might have been more amiable. A dismal experience made 
him cynical. No boon was it to him to be clear-sighted, and 
see only selfishness and flattery round about him. What could 
Walpole tell him about his Lords and Conmions, but that they 
were all venal? Did not his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the 
same stor3'? Dealing with men and women in his rude, scepti- 
cal way, he came to doubt about honor, male and female, about 
patriotism, about religion. "He is wild, but he fights like a 



30 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

man," George I., the taciturn, said of his son and successor. 
Courage George II. certainly- had. The Electoral Prince, at 
the head of his father's contingent, had approved himself a good 
and brave soldier under Eugene and Marlborough. At Gude- 
narde he speciall}' distinguished himself. At Malplaquet the 
other claimant to the English throne won but little honor. 
There was always a question about James's courage. Neither 
then in Flanders, nor afterwards in his own ancient kingdom 
of Scotland, did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. 
But dapper little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, 
and fought like a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia, 
with sword and pistol; and I wish, for the interest of roman- 
cers in general, that that famous duel could have taken place. 
The two sovereigns hated each other with all their might ; their 
seconds were appointed ; the place of meeting was settled ; 
and the duel was only prevented b\^ strong representations 
made to the two, of the European laughter which would have 
been caused by such a transaction. 

Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain that 
he demeaned himself like a little man of valor. At Dettingen his 
horse ran away with him, and with difficulty was stopped from 
carrying him into the enemy's lines. The King, dismounting 
from the fier}^ quadruped, said bravely, '' Now I know I shall 
not run away ; " and placed himself at the head of the foot, 
drew his sword, brandishing it at the whole of the French army, 
and calling out to his own men to come on, in bad F^nglish, but 
with the most famous pluck and spirit. In '45, when the Pre- 
tender was at Derby, and many people began to look pale, the 
King never lost his courage — not he. " Pooh ! don't talk to 
me that stuff!" he said, like a gallant little prince as he was? 
and never for one moment allowed his equanimity, or his busi- 
ness, or his pleasures, or his travels, to be disturbed. Gn 
public festivals he alwa3's appeared in the hat and coat lie wore 
on the famous day of Gudenarde ; and the people laughed, but 
kindly, at the odd old garment, for bravery never goes out of 
fashion. 

In private life the Prince showed himself a worthy descend- 
ant of his father. In this respect, so much has been said about 
the first George's manners, that we need not enter into a de- 
scription of the son's German harem. In 1705 he married a 
princess remarkable for beaut}', for cleverness, for learning, for 
good temper — one of the tru^est and fondest wives ever prince 
was blessed with, and who loved him and was faithful to him, 
and he, in his coarse fashion, loved her to the last. It must 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 31 

be told to the honor of Caroline of Anspach, that, at the time 
when German princes thought no more of changing their re- 
ligion than you of altering your cap, she refused to give up 
Protestantism for the other creed, although an archduke, after- 
wards to be an emperor, was offered to her for a bridegroom. 
Her Protestant relations in Berlin were angry at her rebellious 
spirit ; it was they who tried to convert her (it is droll to think 
that Frederick the Great, who had no religion at all, was known 
for a long time in England as the Protestant hero) , and these 
good Protestants set upon Carohne a certain Father Urban, 
a ver}' skilful Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she 
routed the Jesuit ; and she refused Charles VI. ; and she mar- 
ried the little P^lectoral Prince of Hanover, whom she tended 
with love, and with ever3' manner of saciifice, with artful kind- 
ness, with tender flattery, with entire self-devotion, thencefor- 
ward until her life's end. 

When Gfeorge I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son was 
appointed regent during the royal absence. But this honor was 
never again conferred on the Prince of Wales ; he and his 
father fell out presently. On the occasion of the christen- 
ing of his second son, a royal row took place, and the Prince, 
shaking his fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, called him 
a rogue, and provoked his august father. He and his wife 
were turned out of St. James's, and their princely children 
taken from them, by order of the royal head of the family. 
Father and mother wept piteously at parting from their little 
ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with their love, to 
papa and mamma ; the parents watered the fruit with tears. 
They had no tears thirty-five years afterwards, when Prince 
Frederick died — their eldest son, their heir, their enemy. 

The King called his daughter-in-law '' cette diahlesse madame 
la princesse." The frequenters of the latter's court were forbid- 
den to appear at the King's : their Royal Highnesses going to 
Bath, we read how the courtiers followed them thither, and 
paid that homage in Somersetshire which was forbidden in 
London. That phrase of " cette diahlesse madame la princesse^'' 
explains one cause of the wrath of her royal papa. She was a 
very clever woman : she had a keen sense of humor : she had a 
dreadful tongue : she turned into ridicule the antiquated sultan 
and his hideous harem. She wrote savage letters about him 
home to members of her family. So, driven out from the royal 
presence, the Prince and Princess set up for themselves in 
Leicester Fields, "where," says Walpole, "the most promis- 
ing of the young gentlemen of the next party, and the prettiest 



32 TPIE FOUR GEORGBS. 

and liveliest of the 3'oiing ladies, formed the new court." Be- 
sides Leicester House, they had their lodge at Richmond, fre- 
quented by some of the pleasantest compan}' of those dajs. 
There were the Herveys, and Chesterfield, and little Mr. Pope 
from Twickenham, and with him, sometimes, the savage Dean 
of St. Patrick's, and quite a bevyof 3'oung ladies, whose pretty 
faces smile on us out of history. Tliere was Lepell, famous in 
ballad song ; and the saucv, charming Mary Bellenden, who 
would have none of the Prince of Wales's fine compliments, 
who folded her arms across her breast, and bade H.R.H. keep 
off; and knocked his purse of guineas into his face, and told 
him she was tired of seeing him count them. He was not an 
august monarch, this Augustus. Walpole tells how, one night 
at the royal card-table, the playful princesses pulled a chair 
awaj- from under Lady Deloraine, who, in revenge, j)ulled the 
King's from under hii'n, so that his Majest}' fell on the carpet. 
In whatever posture one sees this ro^yal Geoi'ge, he is ludicrous 
somehow ; even at Dettingen, where he fought so bravely, 
his figure is absurd — calling out in his broken English, and 
lunging with his rapier, like a fencing-master. In contemporary 
caricatures, George's son, " the Hero of CuUoden," is also 
made an object of considerable fun, as witness the preceding 
picture * of him defeated b3' the French (1757) at Hastenbeck. 

I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding George — for those 
charming volumes are in the hands of all who love the gossip of 
the last centur}'. Nothing can be more cheery than Horace's 
letters. Fiddles sing all through them : wax-lights, fine dresses, 
fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle there : 
never was such a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as 
that through wMch he leads us. Hervey, the next great author- 
it}', is a darker spirit. About him there is something frightful : 
a few years since his heirs opened the lid of the Ick worth box ; 
it was as if a Pompeii was opened to us — the last century dug 
up, with its temples and its games,' its chariots, its public 
places — lupanaria. Wandering through that city of the dead, 
that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless intrigues and 
feasts, through those crowds, pushing and eager, and strug- 
gling — rouged, and lying, and fawning — I have wanted some 
one to be friends with. I have said to friends conversant with 
that histor}', " Show me some good person about that Court; 
find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute, gay 
people, some one being that I can love and regard." There is 
that strutting little sultan George II. ; there is that hunch- 

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work. 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 33 

backed, beetle-browed Lord Chesterfield ; there is John Hervey, 
with his deadl}' smile, and ghasth', painted face — I hate them. 
There is Hoadl}', cringing from one bishopric to another : yon- 
der comes little Mr. Pope, from Twickenham, with his friend, 
the Irish dean, in his new cassock, bowing too, bnt with rage 
flashing from under his bushy e3^ebrows, and scorn and hate 
quivering in his smile. Can you be fond of these? Of Pope I 
might: at least I might love his genius, his wit, his greatness, 
his sensibihty — with a certain conviction that at some fancied 
slight, some sneer which he imagined, he would turn upon me 
anckstab me. Can you trust the Queen? She is not of our 
order : their very position makes kings and queens lonel}'. One 
inscrutable attachment that inscrutable woman has. To that 
she is faithful, through all trial, neglect, pain, and time. Save 
her husband, she reall}' cares for no created being. She is good 
enough to her children, and even fond enough of them : but she 
would chop them all up into little pieces to please him. In her 
intercourse with all around her, she was perfectly kind, gracious, 
and natural : but friends may die, daughters may depart, she 
will be as perfectly kind and gracious to the next set. If the 
king wants her, she will smile upon him, be she ever so sad ; 
and walk with him, be she ever so weary ; and laugh at his brutal 
jokes, be she in ever so much pain of body or heart. Caroline's 
devotion to her husband is a prodigy to read of. What charm 
had the little man ? What was there in those wonderful letters of 
thirty pages long, which he wrote to her when he was absent, 
and to his mistresses at Hanover, when he was in London with 
his wife? Why did Caroline, the most lovel}' and accomplished 
princess of German}-, take a little red-faced staring princeling 
for a husband, and refuse an emperor? Wh^^ to her last hour, 
did she love him so ? She killed herself because she loved him 
so. She had the gout, and would plunge her feet in cold water 
in order to walk with him. With the film of death over her 
ej^es, writhing in intolerable pain, she 3'et had a livid smile and 
a gentle word for her master. You have read the wonderful 
history of that death-bed ? How she bade him marry again, and 
the reply the old King blubbered out, " Non, non : j'aurai des 
maitresses." There never was such a ghastly farce. I watch 
the astonishing scene — I stand by that awful bedside, wonder- 
ing at the waj's in which God has ordained the lives, loves, 
rewards, successes, passions, actions, ends of his creatures — 
and can't but laugh in the presence of death, and with the sad- 
dest heart. In that often-quoted passage from Lord Herve}', 
in which the Queen's death-bed is described, the grotesque hor- 

3 



34 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

ror of the details surpasses all satire : the dreadful humor of 
the scene is more terrible than Swift's blackest pages, or Field- 
ing's fiercest iron}^ The man who wrote the stor}^ had some- 
thing diabolical about him : the terrible verses which Pope 
wrote respecting Herve}-, in one of his own moods of almost 
fiendish malignit}-, I fear are true. I am frightened as I look 
back into the past, and fancy I behold that ghastly, beautiful 
face; as I think of the Queen writhing on her death-bed, and 
crying out, " Pray ! — pray ! " — of the ro^'al old sinner by her 
side, who kisses her dead lips with frantic grief, and leaves 
her to sin more ; — of the bev}' of courtly clergymen, and*the 
archbishop, whose prayers she rejects, and who are obliged for 
propriety's sake to shuffle off the anxious inquiries of the public, 
and vow that her Majesty quitted this life " in a heavenly frame 
of mind." What a life! — to what ends devoted! What a 
vanity of vanities ! It is a theme for another pulpit than the 
lecturer's. For a pulpit? — I think the part which pulpits play 
in the deaths of kings is the most ghastl}' of all the ceremonial : 
the lying eulogies, the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sick- 
ening flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and syco- 
phancies — all littered in the name of Heaven in our State 
churches : these monstrous threnodies have been sung from time 
immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, licen- 
tious. The State parson must bring out his commonplaces ; his 
apparatus of rhetorical black-hangings. Dead king or live king, 
the clergyman must flatter him — announce his piet}' whilst 
Jiving, and when dead, perform the obsequies of " our most 
religious and gracious king." 

1 read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious 
King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5,000/. 
(She betted him 5,000/. that he would not be made a bishop, 
and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time 
led up by such hands for consecration ? As I peep into George 
II. 's St. James's, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back 
stairs of the ladies of the Court ; stealthy clergy slipping purses 
into their laps ; that godless old King yawning under his canopy 
in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing. 
Discoursing about what? — about righteousness and judgment? 
Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the King is chattering in Ger- 
man almost as loud as the preacher ; so loud that the clergyman 
— it may be one Dr. Young, he who wrote " Night Thoughts," 
and discoursed on the splendors of the stars, the glories of 
heaven, and utter vanities of this world — actually" burst out 
crying in his pulpit because the defender of the faith and dis- 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 35 

penser of bishoprics would not listen to him ! No wonder that 
the clergy were corrupt and indifferent amidst this indifference 
and corruption. No wonder that sceptics multiplied and morals 
degenerated, so far as the^^ depended on the influence of such a 
king. No wonder that Whitfield cried out in the wilderness, 
that Wesley quitted the«4nsulted temple to pray on the iiill-side. 
I look with reverence on those men at that time. Which is the 
sublimer spectacle — the good John Wesle}', surrounded by his 
congregation of miners at the pit's mouth, or the Queen's chap- 
lains mumbling through their morning office in their ante-room, 
under the picture of the great Venus, with the door opened into 
the adjoining chamber, where the Queen is dressing, talking 
scandal to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who 
is kneeling with the basin at her mistress's side? I say I am 
scared as I look round at this society' — at this king, at these 
courtiers, at these politicians, at these bishops — at this flaunting 
vice and levity. Whereabouts in this Court is the honest man ? 
Where is the pure person one ma}' like ? The air stifles one with 
its sickl}' perfumes. There are some old-world follies and some 
absurd ceremonials about our Court of the present da}', which 
I laugh at, but as an Englishman, contrasting it with the past, 
shall I not acknowledge the change of to-day ? As the mistress 
of St. James's passes me now, I salute the sovereign, wise, 
moderate, exemplary of life ; the good mother ; the good wife ; 
the accomplished lady ; the enlightened friend of art ; the tender 
s}mpathizer in her people's glories and sorrows. 

Of all the Court of George and Caroline, I find no one but 
Lady Suffolk with whorar it seems pleasant and kindly to 
hold converse. Even the misogynist Croker, who edited her 
letters, loves her, and has that regard for her with which her 
sweet graciousness seems to have inspired almost all men and 
some women who came near her. I have noted many little 
traits which go to prove the charms of her character (it is not 
merely because she is charming, but because she is character- 
istic, that I allude to her). She writes delightfully sober letters. 
Addressing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he was, you know, a poet 
penniless and in disgrace), she says: "The place you are in 
has strangely filled your head with physicians and cures ; but, 
take my word for it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink 
the waters without being sick ; and many a man has complained 
of the loss of his heart, who had it in his own possession. I de- 
sire you will keep yours ; for I shall not be very fond of a friend 
without one, and I have a great mind you should be in the 
number of mine.'" 



36 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

When Lord Peterborough was seventy 3'ears old, that indom 
itable 3^outh addressed some flaming love, or rather gallantry, 
letters to Mrs. Howard — curious reUcs they are of the roman- 
tic manner of wooing sometimes in use in those days. It is not 
passion ; it is not love ; it is gallantry : a mixture of earnest 
and acting ; high-flown compUments, profound bows, vows, 
sighs and ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, and Mil- 
lamont and Doricourt in the comed3^ There was a vast elabo- 
ration of ceremonies and etiquette, of raptures — a regulated 
form for kneeling and wooing which has quite passed out of our 
downright manners. Henrietta Howard accepted the noble old 
earl's philandering ; answered the queer love letters with due 
acknowledgment ; made a profound curtsy to Peterborough's 
profound bow ; and got John Gay to help her in the composition 
of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote her chaim- 
ing verses, in which there was truth as well as grace. " O won- 
derful creature ! " he writes : — 

" O wonderful creature, a woman of reason ! 
Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season ! 
When so easy to guess who this angel should be, 
Who would think Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she ? " 

The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleas- 
ant, and painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a 
delightful lady : — 

" I know a thing that's most uncommon — 
Envy, be silent and attend ! r— 
I know a reasonable woman. 
Handsome, yet witty, and a friend : 

"Not warp'd by passion, aw'd by rumor, 

Not grave through pride, or gay through folly : 
An equal mixture of good-humor 
And exquisite soft melancholy. 

"Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir 1 
Yes, she has one, I must aver — 
When all the world conspires to praise her, 
The woman's deaf, and does not hear ! " 

Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The 
Duchess of Queensberry bears testimony to her amiable quali- 
ties, and writes to her: "I tell 3'ou so and so, because you 
love children, and to have children love you." The beautiful, 
jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by contemporaries as "the 
most perfect creature ever known," writes very pleasantly to 



GEORGE THE SECON©. S7 

her "dear Howard," her "dear Swiss," from the countr}', 
whither Mary had retired after her marriage, and when she 
gave up being a maid of lionor. " How do 3^011 do, Mrs. How- 
ard?" Mar}^ breaks out. "How do you do, Mrs. Howard? 
that is all I have to sa3^ This afternoon I am taken with a fit 
of v/riting ; but as to matter, I have nothing better to entertain 
you, than news of my farm. I therefore give you the following 
list of the stock of eatables that I am fatting for m}- private 
tooth. It is well known to the whole county of Kent, that I 
have four fat calves, two fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve prom- 
ising black pigs, two 3'oung chickens, three fine geese, with 
thirteen eggs under each (several being duck-eggs, else the 
others do not come to maturity) ; all this, with rabbits, and 
pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable 
rates. Now, Howard, if you have a mind to stick a knife into 
anything I have named, sa}' so ! " 

A jolly set must they have been, those maids of honor. 
Pope introduces us to a whole bevy of them, in a pleasant 
letter. " I went," he says, " by water to Hampton Court, and 
met the Prince, with all his ladies, on horseback, coming from 
hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took me into protec- 
tion, contrary to the laws against harboring Papists, and gave 
me a dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of 
conversation with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life 
of a maid of honor was of all things the most miserable, and 
wished that all women who envied it had a specimen of it. To 
eat Westphalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges and ditches 
on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a* 
fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on 
the forehead from an uneasy hat — all this may qualify them 
to make excellent wives for hunters. As soon as they wipe off 
the heat of the day, they must simper an hour and catch cold 
in the Princess's apartment ; from thence to dinner wdth what 
appetite they may ; and after that till midnight, w^ork, walk, or 
think which way they please. No lone house in Wales, with 
a mountain and rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. 
Miss Lepell walked with me three or four hours by moonhght, 
and we met no creature of any quality but the King, who gave 
audience to the vice-chamberlain all alone under the garden 
wall." 

I fancy it was a merrier England, that of our ancestors, than 
the island which we inhabit. People high and low amused 
themselves ver}^ much more. I have calculated the manner in 
which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time — 



38 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

and what with drinking, and dining, and snpping, and cards, 
wonder how the}' got through their business at all. They 
played all sorts of games, which, with the exception of cricket 
and tennis, have quite gone out of our manners now. In the 
old prints of St. James's Park, .you still see the marks along 
the walk, to note the balls when the Court played at Mall. 
Fancy Birdcage Walk now so laid out. and Lord John and 
Lord Palmerston knocking balls up and down the avenue ! 
Most of those jolly sports belong to the past, and the good old 
games of England are only to be found in old novels, in old 
ballads, or the columns of dingy old newspapers, which say 
how a main of cocks is to be fought at Winchester between 
the Winchester men and the Hampton men ; or how the Corn- 
wall men and the Devon men are going to hold a great wrest- 
ling-match at Totnes, and so on. 

A hundred and twenty years ago there were not only country 
towns in England, but people who inhabited them. We were 
very much more gregarious ; we were amused by very simple 
pleasures. Every town had its fair, every village its wake. 
The old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great 
cudgel-playings, famous grinning through horse-collars, great 
maypole meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run 
races clad in very light attire ; and the kind gentry and good 
parsons thought no shame in looking on. Dancing bears went 
about the country with i)ipc and tabor. Certain well-known 
tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of years, and 
high and low rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen who 
•wished to entertain their female friends constantly sent for a 
band. When Beau Fielding, a might}' fine gentleman, was 
courting the lady whom he married, he treated her and her 
companion at his lodgings to a supper from the tavern, and 
after supper they sent out for a fiddler — three of them. Fanc}' 
the three, in a great wainscoted room, in Covent Garden or 
Soho, lighted bj' two or three candles in silver sconces, some 
grapes and a bottle of Florence wine on the table, and the 
honest fiddler playing old tunes in quaint old minor kej's, as 
the Beau takes out one lady after the other, and solemnly 
dances with her ! 

The ver}' great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, 
and the like, went abroad and made the great tour ; the home 
satirists jeered at the Frenchified and Italian waj-s which they 
brought back ; but the gi-eater number of people never left the 
countr3^ The joUj' squire often had never been twenty miles 
from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to Harrogate, 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 39 

or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of 
these places of pleasure. Ga^^ writes to us about the fiddlers 
at Tunbridge ; of the ladies haviug merry little private balls 
amongst themselves ; and the gentlemen entertaining them by 
turns with tea and music. One of the younsf beauties whom 
he met did not care for tea : " We have a young lady here," he 
says, ''that is very particular in her desires. I have known 
some young ladies, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for 
some equipage or title, a husband or matadores : but this lad}^ 
who is but seventeen, and has 30,000/. to her fortune, places 
all her wishes on a pot of good ale. When her friends, for the 
sake of her shape and complexion, would dissuade her from it, 
she answers, with the truest sincerity'', that b}' the loss of shape 
and complexion she could only lose a husband, whereas ale is 
her passion." 

Every country town had its assembly-room — mouldy old 
tenements, which we ma}' still see in deserted inn-yards, in 
decayed provincial cities, out of which the great wen of London 
has sucked all the life. York, at assize times, and through- 
out the winter, harbored a large society of northern gentry. 
Shrewsbury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmarket, 
I read of " a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and 
blacklegs ; " at Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodigious 
crowd in the hall, the rooms, and the gallery. In Cheshire (it 
is a maid of honor of Queen Caroline who wa'ites, and who is 
longing to be back at Hampton Court, and the fun there) I peep 
into a country-house, and see a very merry party: " We meet 
in the work-room before nine, eat, and break a joke or two till 
twelve, then we repair to our own chambers and make ourselves 
readj', for it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great bell 
fetches us into a parlor, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, 
poisoned darts, several pair of old boots and shoes worn by 
men of might, with the stirrups of King Charles I., taken from 
him at Edgehill," — and there they have their dinner, after 
which comes dancing and supper. 

As for Bath, all histor}' went and bathed and drank there. 
George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his court, 
scarce a character one can mention of the earl}^ last century, 
but was seen in that famous Pump Room where Beau Nash 
presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton 
and Pope : 

" This picture, placed these busts between, 
Gives satire all its strength : 
Wisrlom and Wit are little seen. 
But Folly at full length." 



40 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, 
embroidered, beruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent 
Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should like 
to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots 
(he actually had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots !), 
with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, 
and a chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for 
his dinner. Chesterfield came there many a time and gambled 
for hundreds, and grinned through his gout. Marj^ Wortley 
was there, 3'Oung and beautiful ; and Mary Wortley, old, 
hideous, and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came there, slipping 
away from one husband, and on the look-out for another. 
Walpole passed man3' a day there ; sickl}', supercilious, absurdly 
dandified, and affected ; with a brilliant wit, a delightful sensi- 
bility ; and for his friends, a most tender, generous, and faith- 
ful heart. And if 3'ou and I had been alive then, and strolling 
down Milsom Street — hush ! we should have taken our hats 
off, as an awful, long, lean, gaunt figure, swathed in flannels, 
passed b}' in its chair, and a livid face looked out from the 
window — great fierce ejes staring from under a bushy, pow- 
dered wig, a terrible frown, a terrible Roman nose — and we 
whisper to one another, ' ' There he is ! There's the great 
commoner ! There is Mr. Pitt ! " As we walk away, the 
abbe}' bells are set a-ringing ; and we meet our testy friend 
Toby Smollett, on the arm of James Quin the actor, who tells 
us that tlie bells ring for Mr. Bullock, an eminent cowkeeper 
from Tottenham, who has just arrived to drink the waters ; and 
Toby shakes his cane at the door of Colonel Ringworm — the 
Creole gentleman's lodgings next his own — where tlie colonel's 
two negroes are practising on the French horn. 

When we try to recall social England, we must fancy it 
playing at cards for many hours every day. The custom is 
weilnigh gone out among us now, but fifty years ago was gen- 
eral, fifty years before that almost universal in the country. 
"Gaming has become so much the fashion," writes Seymour, 
the author of the " Court Gamester," " that he who in company 
should be ignorant of the games in vogue, would be reckoned 
low-bred, and hardly fit for conversation." There were cards 
everywhere. It was considered ill-bred to read in company. 
" Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms," old ladies used 
to say. People were jealous, as it were, and angry with them. 
You will find in Hervey that George II. was always furious at 
the sight of books ; and his Queen, who loved reading, had to 
practise it in secret in her closet. But cards were the resource 







WILLIAM PITT — LORD CHATHAM. 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 41 

of all the world. EveiT night, for hours, kings and queens of 
England sat down and handled their majesties of spades and 
diamonds. In European Courts, 1 believe the practice still 
remains, not for gambling, but for pastime. Our ancestors 
generallj' adopted it. " Books ! prithee don't talk to me about 
books," said old Sarah Marlborough. ''The only books I 
know are men and cards." " Dear old Sir Roger de Coverle}' 
sent all his tenants a string of hogs' puddings and a pack of 
cards at Christmas," says the Spectator^ wishing to depict a kind 
landlord. One of the good old lady writers in whose letters I 
have been dipping cries out, " Sure cards have kept us women 
from a great deal of scandal ! " Wise old Johnson regretted 
that he had not learnt to play. "It is very useful in life," 
he sa3's ; "it generates kindness, and consolidates societ}'." 
David Hume never went to bed without his whist. We have 
Walpole, in one of his letters, in a transport of gratitude for the 
cards. " I shall build an altar to Pam," sa3's he, in his pleasant 
dandified way, " for the escape of ni}' charming Duchess of Graf- 
ton." The Duchess had been playing cards at Rome, when she 
ought to have been at a cardinal's concert, where the floor fell 
in, and all the monsignors were precipitated into the cellar. 
Even the Nonconformist clergy looked not unkindlj^ on the prac- 
tice. " I do not think," says one of them, " that honest Martin 
Luther committed sin b}^ placing at backgammon for an hour or 
two after dinner, in order b}' unbending his mind to promote 
digestion." As for the High Church parsons, they all played, 
bishops and all. On Twelfth-da}^ the Court used to play in 
state. "This being Twelfth-day, his Majesty, the Prince of 
Wales, and the Knights Companions of the Garter, Thistle, 
and Bath, appeared in the collars of their respective orders. 
Their Majesties, the Prince of Wales, and three eldest Prin- 
cesses, went to the Chapel Ro3'al, preceded b}^ the heralds. 
The Duke of Manchester carried the sword of State. The 
King and Prince made offering at the altar of gold, frankin- 
cense, and m3'rrh, according to the annual custom. At night 
their Majesties pla3'ed at hazard with the nobilit}', for the bene- 
fit of the groom-porter ; and it was said the king won 600 
guineas ; the queen, 360 ; the Princess Amelia, twent3^ ; Prin- 
cess Caroline, ten ; the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Port- 
more, several thousands." 

Let us glance at the same chronicle, which is of the 3'ear 
1731, and see how others of our forefathers were engaged. 

"Cork, 15th January. This day, one Tim Croneen was, 
for the murder and robbery of Mr. St. Leger and his wife, 



42 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

sentenced to be hanged two minutes, then his head to be- 
cut off, and his body divided in four quarters, to be placed in 
four cross-wa3's. He was servant to Mr. St. Leger, and com- 
mitted the murder with the privity of the servant-maid, who 
was sentenced to be burned ; also of the gardener, whom he 
knocked on the head, to deprive him of his share of the 
booty." 

'' January 3. — A postboy was shot by an Irish gentleman 
on the road near Stone, in Staflfbrdshire, who died in two days, 
for which the gentleman was imprisoned." 

*' A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman's stables at 
Bungay, in Norfolk, b}' a person who cut him down, and run- 
ning for assistance, left his penknife behind him. The poor 
man recovering, cut his throat with the knife ; and a river being 
nigh, jumped into it ; but company coming, he was dragged out 
alive, and was like to remain so." 

" The Honorable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of 
Nottingham, is appointed ambassador at tlie Hague, in the 
room of the Earl of Chesterfield, who is on his return home." 

"William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, 
chaplain in ordinary to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berk- 
hampstead, in the county of Hertford, are appointed clerks of 
the commissioners of bankruptcy." 

" Charles Creagh, Esq., and Macnamara, Esq., between 

whom an old a'rudo'c of three vears had subsisted, which had 
occasioned their being bound over about fifty times for breaking 
the peace, meeting in company with Mr. Eyres, of Galloway, 
the}' discharged their pistols, and all three were killed on the 
spot — to the great joy of their peaceful neighbors, say the 
Irish papers." 

"Wheat is 26s. to 285., and barley 20s. to 22s. a quarter; 
three per cents, 92 ; best loaf sugar, 9|c?. ; Bohea, 12s. to 14s. ; 
Pekoe, 18s. ; and Hyson, 35s. per pound." 

" At Exon was celebrated with great magnificence the birth- 
day of the son of Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 
1,000 persons were present. A bullock was roasted whole ; a 
butt of wine and several tuns of beer and cider were given to 
the populace. At the same time Sir William delivered to his 
son, then of age, Powdrara Castle, and a great estate." 

" Charles worth and Cox, two solicitors, convicted of forgery, 
stood on the pillor}^ at the Royal Exchange. The first was 
severely handled by the populace, but the other was very much 
favored, and protected by six or seven fellows who got on the 
pillor}' to protect him from the insults of the mob." 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 43 

'' A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamp- 
post, which he climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the 
pillory." 

'' Mar\' Lynn was burnt to ashes at the stake, for being con- 
cerned in the murder of her mistress." 

" Alexander Russell, the foot soldier, who was capitally con- 
victed for a street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved 
for transportation ; but having an estate fallen to him, obtained 
a free pardon." 

'' The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana Spen- 
cer, at Marlborough House. He has a fortune of 30,000/. down, 
and is to have 100,000/. at the death of the Duchess Dowager 
of Marlborough, his grandmother." 

'•• March 1 being the anniversary of the Queen's birthda}', 
w^hen her Majest}' entered the forty-ninth 3'ear of her age, 
there was a splendid appearance of nobility at St. James's. 
Her Majesty was magnificently dressed, and wore a flowered 
muslin head-edging, as did also her Ro^-al Highness. The 
Lord Portmore was said to have had the richest dress, 
though an Italian Count had twentj^-four diamonds instead of 
buttons." 

New clothes on the birthday were the fashion for all loyal 
people. Swfft mentions the custom several times. Walpole 
is constantly' speaking of it ; laughing at the practice, but hav- 
ing the very finest clothes from Paris, nevertheless. If the 
King and Queen were unpopular, there were very few new 
clothes at the drawing-room. In a paper in the True Patriot^ 
No. 3, written to attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and 
Popery, Fielding supposes the Scotch and the Pretender in pos- 
session of London, and himself about to be hanged for loyalty, 
when, just as the rope is round his neck, he says : " M3' little 
girl entered my bedchamber, and put an end to my dream by 
pulling open my eyes, and telling me that the tailor had just 
brought home my clothes for his Majesty's birthday." In his 
" Temple Beau," the beau is dunned " for a birthday suit of 
velvet, 40/." Be sure that Mr. Harry Fielding was dunned 
too. 

The public daj^s, no doubt, were splendid, but the private 
Court life must have been awfully wearisome. "I will not 
trouble 3'Ou," writes Hervey to Lad}' Sandon, " with au}^ 
account of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse 
ever went in a more constant track, or a more unchanging 
circle ; so that, b}" the assistance of an almanac for the day of 
the week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you maj* inform 



U THE FOUR GEORGES. 

3'ourself full}*, without an}- other intelligence but 3'our memory, 
of ever}' transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, 
chaises, levees, and audiences fill the morning. At night the 
King plays at commerce and backgammon, and the Queen at 
quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly 
gauntlet, the Queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal 
rapping her knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightlj- 
opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses 
Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls from one room 
to another (as Dryden sa3's), like some discontented ghost that 
oft appears, and is forbid to speak : and stirs himself about as 
people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it 
burn brisker. At last the King gets up ; the pool finishes ; and 
ever^'bod}' has their dismission. Their Majesties retire to Lady 
Charlotte and m}' Lord Lifford ; my Lord Grantham, to Lady 
Frances and Mr. Clark : some to supper, some to bed ; and 
thus the evening and the morning make the da}'." 

The Kinoj's fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of 
rough jokes among his English subjects, to whom sauer-haut 
and sausages have ever been ridiculous objects. When our pres- 
ent Prince Consort came among us, the people bawled out songs 
in the streets indicative of the absurdity of Germany in gen- 
eral. The sausage-shops produced enormous sausages which 
we might suppose were the daily food and delight of German 
princes. I remember the caricatures at the marriage of Prince 
Leopold with the Princess Charlotte. The bridegroom was 
drawn in rags. George III.'s wife was called by the people 
a beggarly German duchess ; the British idea being that all 
princes were beggarly except British princes. King George 
paid us back. He thought there were no manners out of Ger- 
many "^arah Marlborough once coming to visit the Princess, 
whilst her Royal Highness was whipping one of the roaring 
royal children, "Ah!" says George, who was standing by, 
" you have no good manners in England, because you are not 
properly brought up when you are young." He insisted that 
no English cooks could roast, no English coachman could 
drive : he actually questioned the superiority of our nobihty, 
our horses, and our roast-beef! 

Whilst he was away from his beloved Hanover, eveiything 
remained there exactly as in the Prince's presence. There 
were 800 horses in the stables, there was all the apparatus of 
chamberlains, court-marshals, and equerries; and court assem- 
blies were held every Saturday, where all the nobihty of Hano- 
ver assembled at what I can't but think a fine and touching 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 45 

ceremon3\ A large arm-chair was placed in the assembly- 
room, and on it the King's portrait. The nobility advanced, 
and made a bow , to the arm-chair, and to the image which 
Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up ; and spoke under their 
voices before the august picture, just as they would have done 
had the King Churfiirst been present himself. 

He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729, 
he went for two whole years, during which Caroline reigned for 
him .in England, and he was not in the least missed by his 
British subjects. He went again in '35 and '36 ; and between 
the years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on the 
Continent, which amusement he was obliged to give up at the 
outbreak of the Seven Years' war. Here eyery day's amuse- 
ment was the same. " Our life is as uniform as that of a 
monastery," writes a courtier whom Vehse quotes. " Every 
morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we drive in the 
heat to Herrenhausen, through an enormous linden avenue ; and 
twice a day cover our coats and coaches with dust. In the 
Kincr's societv there never is the least change. At table, and 
at cards, he sees alwajs the same faces, and at the end of the 
game retires into his chamber. Twice a week there is a French 
theatre ; the other days there is plaj^ in the gallery. In this 
wa}', were the King alwaj'S to stop in Hanover, one could 
make a ten years' calendar of his proceedings ; and settle 
beforehand what his time of business, meals, and pleasure 
would be." 

The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lad}^ 
Yarmouth was now in full favor, and treated with profound 
respect by the Hanover societ}', though it appears rather neg- 
lected in England when she came among us. In 1740, a couple 
of tlie King's daughters went to see him at Hanover ; Anna, 
the Princess of Orange (about whom, and whose husband and 
marriage-day, Walpole and Hervey have left us the most ludi- 
crous descriptions), and Maria of Hesse Cassel, with their 
resi^ective lords. This made the Hanover court very brilliant. 
In honor of his high guests, the King gave several /e^es; among 
others a magnificent masked ball, in the green theatre at Her- 
renhausen — the garden theatre, with linden and box for screen, 
and grass for a carpet, where the Platens had danced to George 
and his father the late sultan. The stage and a great part of 
the garden were illuminated with colored lamps. Almost the 
whole court appeared in white dominoes, "like," says the de- 
scriber of the scene, "like spirits in the Elysian fields. At 
night, supper was served in the gallery with three great tables, 



46 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

and the King was very merry. After supper dancing was 
resumed, and I did not get home till five o'clock bj' full day- 
light to Hanover. Some davs afterwards we had, in the opera- 
house at Hanover, a great assembly. The King appeared in a 
Turkish dress ; his turban was ornamented with a magnificent 
agraffe of diamonds ; the Lady Yarmouth was dressed as a 
sultana ; nobody was more beautiful than the Princess of 
Hesse." So, while poor Caroline was resting in her coffin, 
dapper little George, with his red face and his white eyebrows 
and goggle-e\'es, at sixty 3'ears of age, is dancing a pretty dance 
with Madame Walmoden, and capering about dressed up like 
a Turk ! For twenty years more, that little old Bajazet went 
on in this Turkish fashion, until the fit came which choked the 
old man, when he ordered the side of his coflSn to be taken out, 
as well as that of poor Caroline's who had preceded him, so 
that his sinful old bones and ashes might mingle with those 
of the faithful creature. O strutting turke3'-cock of Herren- 
hausen ! O naughty little Mahomet? in what Turkish paradise 
are 3'ou now, and where be 3'our painted houris? So Countess 
Yarmouth appeared as a sultana, and his Majesty- in a Turkish 
dress wore an agraffe of diamonds, and was ver}^ merr^^ was 
he ? Friends I he was 3'our fathers' King as well as mine — let 
us drop a respectful tear over his grave. 

He said of his wife that he never knew a woman who was 
worthy to buckle her shoe : he would sit alone weeping before 
her portrait, and when he had dried his e3'es, he would go off to 
his Walmoden and talk of her. On the 25th da3' of October, 
17G0, he being then in the seventy-seventh 3'ear of his age, and 
the thirty-fourth of his reign, his page went to take him his royal 
chocolate, and behold ! the most religious and gracious King 
was lying dead on the floor. They went and fetched Walmo- 
den ; but Walmoden could not wake him. The sacred Majesty 
was but a lifeless corpse. The King was dead ; God save the 
King ! But, of course, poets and clergymen decorously be- 
wailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in which 
an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, and over 
which 30U may cry or you may laugh, exactly as 3'our humor 
suits : — 

" While at his feet expiring Faction lay, 
No contest left but wlio should best obey ; 
Saw in his offspring all himself renewed ; 
The same fair path of glory still pursued ; 
Saw to young George Augusta's care impart 
Whate'er could raise and humanize the heart ; 



GEORGE THE SECOND. 47 

Blend all his grandsire's virtues with his own, 
And form their mingled radiance for the throne — 
No farther blessing- could on earth be given — 
The next degree of happiness was — heaven ! " 

If he had been good, if he had been jttst, if he had been pure 
in life, and wise in cotincil, could the poet have said much more? 
It was a parson who came and wept over this grave, with Wal- 
moden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor old man 
slumbering' below. Here was one who had neither dignity, 
learning, morals, nor wit — who tainted a great society by a 
bad example ; who in youth, manhood, okl age, was gross, low, 
and sensual; and Mr. Porteus, afterwards my Lord Bishop 
Porteus, says the earth was not good enough for him, and that 
his only place was heaven ! Bravo, Mr. Porteus ! The divine 
wlio wept these tears over George the Second's memory wore 
George the Third's lawn. I don't know whether people still 
admire his poetry or his sermons. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 



We have to olance over sixtv vears in as manv minutes. 
To read the mere cataloone of characters who fioured durinsc 
that long period, would occupy our allotted time, and w^e should 
have all text and no sermon. Enoland has to undei'oo the 
revolt of the American colonies ; to submit to defeat and sepa- 
ration ; to shake under the volcano of the Frencli Revolution ; 
to grapple ' and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy 
Napoleon ; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. 
The old society, "vvith its courtly s[)lendors, has to pass away ; 
generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow 
Ci)atliam to the tomb ; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be 
superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory ; the old poets 
who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves ; 
Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise ; Garrick to 
delioht the world with his dazzlino- dramatic i>enius, and Kean 
to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished 
theatre. Steam has to be invented ; kiniijs to be beiieaded. 
banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode, 
and Georo'e Til. is to be alive throuoli all these varied 
changes, to accompany hig peoi)le through all these revolutions 
of thought, government, society ; to survive out of the old world 
into ours. 

AVhen I first saw England, she was in mourning for the 
young Piincess Charlotte, the hope of the enii)ire. I came 
from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on 
the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk 
over rocks and hills until we reached a garden, where we saw 
a man walking. " That is he," said the black man : '' that is 
Bonaparte ! He eats three sheep every day, and all the little 




GEOKGE III. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 49 

children lie can lay hands on ! " There were people in the 
British dominions besides that poor Caleatfa scr\ing-man, -vrith 
an equal horror of the Corsican ogre. 

"With the same childish attendant, I remember peepino- 
through the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode 
of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards pacing 
before the gates of the phice. The place ! AVhat place? The 
palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It 
is but a name now. AVhcre l)e the sentries who used to salute 
as the Royal chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with 
the kings inside, have driven to the realms of Pluto ; the tall 
Guards have marched into darkacss, and the echoes of their 
drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once stood, a 
hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to 
St. James's Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their 
tea at the " Athenteum Club;" as many grisly warriors are 
garrisoning the '' United Service Club " opposite"! Pall Mall is 
the great social Exchange of London now — the mart of news, 
of politics, of scandal, of rumor — the English forum, so to 
speak, where men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, 
the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. 
And, now and then, to a few antiquarians whose thoughts are 
with the past rather than with the present, it is a memorial of 
o4d times and old people, and Pall jNIall is our Palmyra. Look ! 
About this spot Tom of Ten Thousand was killed by Konigs- 
marck's sjang. In that great red house Gainsborough lived, 
and CuUoden Cumberland, George IIL's r.ncle. Yonder is 
Sarah Marlborough's palace, just as it stood when that terma- 
gant occupied it At 25, Walter Scott used to live ; at the 
iiouse, now No. 70,* and occupied by the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in Eoreign Parts, resided JMrs. 
Eleanor Gwynn. comedian. How often has Queen Caroline's 
chair issued from under yonder arch ! All the men of the 
Georges have passed up and down the street. It has seen 
Walpole's chariot and Chatham's sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, 
Sheridan, on their way to Brookes's ; and stately William Pitt 
stalking on the arm of Dundas ; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan 
reeling" out of Raggett's; and Byron limping into Wattier's ; 
and Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and 
Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor ; and the 
Prince of Wales and tlie Duke of York clattering over the 
pavement ; and Johnson counting the i)osts along the streets, 
after dawdling before Dodsley's window ; and Horry Walpolc 

* 1850. 
4 



50 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought at 
Christie's ; and George Selwj-n sauntering into White's. 

In the pubHshecl letters to George JSelwyn we get a mass of 
correspondence b}* no means so briUiant and witt>' as Walpole's, 
or so bitter and bright as Hervey's, but as interesting, and even 
more descriptive of the time, because tlie letters are the work 
of man}' hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, 
and more natural than Horace's dandified treble, and Sporus's 
malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters — as one 
looks at Reynolds's noble pictures illustrative of those magnifi- 
cent times and voluptuous people — one almost hears the voice 
of the dead past ; the laughter and the chorus ; the toast called 
over the brimming cups ; the shout at the racecourse or the 
gaming-table ; the merry joke frankl}' spoken to the laughing 
fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those ladies who heard 
and spoke such coarse jokes ; how grand those gentlemen ! 

I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, 
has almost vanished off.' the face of the earth, and is disappear- 
ing like the beaver or the Red Indian. AVe can't have fine 
gentlemen any more, because we can't have the society in which 
the}' lived. The people will not obey : the pai-asites will not be 
as obsequious as formerly : children do not go down on their 
knees to beg their parents' blessing : chaplains do not sa}' grace 
and retire before the pudding: servants do not say ^'yonr 
honor" and "your worship" at every moment: tradesmen do 
not stand hat in hand as the gentleman i)asses : authors do not 
wait for hours in gentlemen's ante-rooms with a fulsome dedi- 
cation, for which they hope to get five guineas from his lordship. 
In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. JSecretar}^ 
Pitt's under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him ; 
but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty knees to 
George II. ; and when George III. spoke a few kind words 
to him. Lord Chatham burst into tears of ]-everential joy and 
gratitude ; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so great 
the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or Lord 
Palmerston on their knees whilst the Sovereign was reading a 
despatch, or beginning to cry because Prince Albert said some- 
thing civil ! 

At the accession of George III., the patricians were yet at 
the heioht of their oood fortune. Societv recognized their 
superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for 
granted. They inherited not only titles and estates, and seats 
in the House of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. 
There were a multitude of Government places, and not merely 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 51 

these, but bribes of actual 500/. notes, which members of the 
House took not much shame in receiving. Fox went into 
Farhament at 20 : Pitt when just of age : his father when not 
mucli older. It was the good time for Patricians. Small 
blame to them if they took and enjoyed, and over-enjo3ed, 
the prizes of politics, the pleasures of social life. 

In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a 
whole societ}' of these defunct fine gentlemen : and can watch 
with a curious interest a life which the novel-writers of that 
time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To Smollett, to Field- 
ing- even, a lord was a lord : a gorgeous being with a blue 
ribbon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom, 
to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of 
humbler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was 
ignorant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and be- 
sought Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great 
world, to examine a volume of Sir Charles Grandison, and 
point out any errors which she might see in this particular. 
Mrs. Donnellan found so many faults, that Richardson changed 
color ; shut up the book ; and muttered that it were best to 
throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original 
men and women of fashion of the early time of George III. 
We can follow them to the new club at Almack's : we can 
travel over Europe with them ; we can accompany them not 
onl}' to the public places, but to their country-houses and 
private society-. Here is a whole compan\' of them ; wits and 
prodigals ; some persevering in their bad ways : some repent- 
ant, but relapsing ; beautiful ladies, parasites, humble chap- 
lains, led captains. Those fair creatures whom we love in 
Reynolds's portraits, and who still look out on us from his 
canvases with their sweet calm faces and gracious smiles — 
those fine gentlemen who did us the honor to govern us ; who 
inherited their boroughs ; took their ease in their patent places ; 
and slipped Lord North's bribes so elegantly under their ruffles 
— we make acquaintance with a hundred of these line folks, 
hear their talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, 
intrigues, debts, duels, divorces ; can fancy them aHve if we 
read the book lono- enouoii. We can attend at Duke Ilamil- 
ton's wedding, and behold him marry his bride with the curtain- 
ring :, we can peep into her poor sister's death-bed : we can see 
Charles Fox cursing over the cards, or March bawling out the 
odds at Newmarket: we can imagine Bui'goyne tripping off 
from St. James's Street to conquer the Americans, and slink- 
ing back into the club somewhat crestfallen after his beating ; 



54 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

somer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this 
was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted 
Paris in a huff'. The poor thing died presently of consumption, 
accelerated, it was said, by the red and white i»int with which she 
plastered those luckless charms of hers. (We must represent to 
©urselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, as plas- 
tered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two daugh- 
ters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously 
fond of little children), and wlio are described very drolly and 
pathetically in these letters, in their little nursery, where pas- 
sionate little Lady Fanny, if she had not good cards, flung hers 
into Lady Mary's face ; and where they sat conspiring how they 
should receive a new mother-in-law whom their papa presently 
brought home. They got on very welPwith their mother-in-law, 
who was very kind to them ; and the}" grew up, and they were 
married, and they were both divorced afterwards — poor little 
souls ! Poor painted mother, poor society, ghastly in its pleas- 
ures, its loves, its revelries I 

As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about 
him ; l)ecause, though he was a wild and w^eak commissioner at 
one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost 
ten thousand pound's at a sitting — " five times more," says the 
unlucky gentleman, '' than I ever lost before ; " though he swore 
he never would touch a card again ; and yet, strange to say, went 
back to the table and lost still more : yet he repented of his errors, 
sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country 
gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good children 
whom he had always lo^'ed w^ith the best part of his heart. He 
had married at one-and-twenty. He found himself, in the midst 
of a dissolute society, at the head of a great fortune. Forced 
into luxury, and obliged to be a great lord and a great idler, he 
yielded to some tem|)tations, and paid for them a l)itter penalty 
of manh' remorse ; from some others he fled wisely, and ended 
by conquering them nobly. But he always had the good wife 
and children in his mind, and they saved him. *'I am very 
glad you did not come to me the morning I left London," he 
writes to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for America. " I can 
only say, I never knew till that moment of parting, what grief 
was." There is no parting now*, where they are. The faithful 
wife, the kind, generous gentleman, have left a noble race be- 
hind them : an inheritor of his name and titles, who is beloved 
as widely as he is known ; a man most kind, accomplished, 
gentle, friendly, and pure ; and female descendants occrupying 
high stations and embellishing great names ; some renowned 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 53 

for beaut}', and all for spotless lives, and pious matronly 
virtues. 

Another of Sclvvyn's correspondents is the Earl of March, 
afterwards Duke of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this 
century ; and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or gra}'- 
beard, was not an ornament to any possible societj-. The 
legends about" old Q. arc awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and 
contemporay chronicles, the observer of human nature may 
follow him, drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his 
career ; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan 
died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest 
season of youth and passion. There is a house in Piccadilly, 
where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. 
sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the 
women as they passed b}'. 

There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, 
sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present 
credit. " Your friendship," writps Carlisle to him, 'Ms so dif- 
ferent from anything I have ever met with or seen in the 
world, that when I recollect the extraordinary i)roofs of your 
kindness, it seems to me like a dream." ''I have lost my 
oldest friend and acquaintance, G. Selwyn," writes Walpolc to 
Miss Berry: "■ I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, 
but for a thousand good qualities." I am glad for my part that 
such a lover of cakes and ale should have had a thousand "ood 
qualities — that he should have been friendly, generous, warm- 
Jiearted, trustworthy. '• I rise at six," writes Carlisle to him, 
from Spa (a great resort of fashionable people in our ancestors' 
days), " pla}' at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening, 
till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for 
you ! You get up at nine ; play with Raton your dog till 
twelve, in your dressing-gown ; then (?reep down to ' White's ; ' 
are five hours at table ; sleep till siipper-time ; and then make 
two wretches carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of 
claret in you, three miles for a shilling." Occasionally, instead 
of sleeping at ''Whites," George w^ent down and snoozed in 
the House of Conmions by the ride of Lord North. He repre- 
sented Gloucester for many \-ears, and had a borough of his 
own, Ludgershall, for which, when he was too lazy to contest 
Gloucester, he sat himself. "I have given directions for the 
election of Lud2:ershall to be of Lord Melbourne and my- 
self," he wa-ites to the Premier, whose friend he was, and 
who was himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good-natured as 
George. 



54 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

somer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this 
was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted 
Paris in a huff". The poor thing died presently of consumption, 
accelerated, it was said, by the red and white i:wint witli which she 
plastered tliose luckless charms of hers. (We must represent to 
ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, as plas- 
tered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two daugh- 
ters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously 
fond of little children), and who are described very drolly and 
pathetically in these letters, in their little nursery, where pas- 
sionate little Lady Fanny, if she had not good cards, flung hers 
into Lady Mary's face ; and where they sat conspiring how they 
should receive a new mother-in-law whom their pai)a presently 
brought home. They got on very welPwith their mother-in-law, 
who was very kind to them ; and the}' grew up, and the}' were 
married, and they were both divorced afterwards — poor little 
souls [ Poor painted mother, poor society, ghastly' in its pleas- 
ures, its loves, its revelries ! 

As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about 
him ; l)ecause, though he was a wild and weak commissioner at 
one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost 
ten thousand [)ound's at a sitting — " five times more," says the 
nnlucky gentleman, '' than I ever lost before ; " though he sw^ore 
he never would touch a card again ; and yet, strange to say, went 
back to the table and lost still more : yet he repented of his errors, 
sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country 
gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good children 
whom he had always loved with the best part of his heart. He 
had married at one-and-twenty. He found himself, in the midst 
of a dissolute society, at the head of a great fortune. Forced 
into luxurv, and oblio-ed to be a oreat lord and a o'reat idler, he 
jielded to some temi)tations, and paid for them a bitter penalty 
of manh' remorse ; from some others he fled wisely, and ended 
by conquering them nobly. But he always had the good wife 
and children in his mind, and they saved him. *'! am very 
glad you did not come to me the morning I left London," be 
writes to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for America. " I can 
only say, I never knew till that moment of parting, what grief 
was." There is no parting now, where they are. The faithful 
wife, the kind, generous gentleman, have left a noble race be- 
hind them : an inheritor of his name and titles, who is beloved 
as widely as he is known; a man most kind, accomplished, 
gentle, friendly, and pure ; and female descendants occupying 
high stations and embellishing great names ; some renowned 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 53 

for beaut}', and all for spotless lives, and pious matronly 
virtues. 

Another of Sehvyn's correspondents is the Earl of March, 
afterwards Duke of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this 
century ; and who certainly as earl or dnke, young man or gra}'- 
beaid, was not an ornament to any possible societj'. The 
legends about" old Q. are awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and 
contemporay chronicles, the observer of human nature may 
follow him, drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his 
career ; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan 
died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest 
season of youth and passion. There is a house in Piccadilly, 
where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. 
sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the 
women as they passed b}'. 

There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, 
sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present 
credit. '' Your friendship," writps Carlisle to him, '' is so dif- 
ferent from anything 1 have ever met w'ith or seen in the 
world, that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs of 3our 
kindness, it seems to me like a dream." '"I have lost my 
oldest friend and acquaintance, G. Selwyn," writes Walpole to 
Miss Berry : '' I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, 
but for a thousand good qualities." I am glad for my part that 
such a lover of cakes and ale should have had a thousand «ood 
qualities — that he should have been friendly, generous, warm- 
liearted, trustworthy. '' I rise at six," writes Carlisle to him, 
from Spa (a great resort of fiishionable peo[)le in our ancestors' 
days), '' pla\- at cricket till dinner, and dance in the eveniug, 
till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for 
you ! You get up at nine ; play with Raton your dog till 
twelve, in vour dressing-gown ; then c'reep down to ' White's ; ' 
are five hours at table ; sleep till supper-time ; and then make 
two w^retches carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of 
claret in von, three miles for a shillins:." Occasionallv, instead 
of sleeping at ''Whites," George went down and snoozed in 
the House of Connnons by the ri'de of Lord North. He repre- 
sented Gloucester for many Acars, and had a borough of his 
own, Ludgershall, for which, when he was too lazy to contest 
Gloucester, he sat himself. "I have given directions for the 
election of Ludo'crshall to be of Lord Melbourne and mv- 
self," he Avrites to the Premier, whose friend he was, and 
who was himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good-natured as 
George. 



55 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

If, in looking at tlie lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank 
and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, 
and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's fail- 
ings, and recollect that we, too, w^re vciy likely indolent and 
voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural 
taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. 
"What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a 
great fortune, do but be splendid and idle? In these letters of 
Lord Carlisle's from which I have been quoting, there is many 
a just complaint made by the kind-hearted young nobleman of 
the state which he is obliged to keep ; the magnificence in which 
he must live ; the idleness to which his position as a peer of 
England bound him. Better for him had he been a lawyer at 
his desk, or a clerk in his office ; — a thousand times better 
chance for happiness, education, employment, security from 
temptation. A few years since the profession of arms was the 
only one which our nobles could follow. The church, the bar, 
medicine, literature, the arts, .commerce, were below them. It 
is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England : 
the working educated men, away from Lord North's bribery in 
the senate ; the good clergy not corrupted into parasites by 
hopes of i)referment ; the tradesmen risnig into manly opulence ; 
the painters pursuing their gentle calling: the men of letters in 
their quiet studies ; these are the men whom we love and like 
to read of in the last age. How small the grandees and the 
men of pleasure look beside them ! how contemptible the story 
of the Geoi'ge III. court squabbles are beside the recorded talk 
of dear old Johnson ! What is the grandest entertainment at 
Windsor, compared to a night at the club over its modest cups, 
with Perc}' and Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at 
the table? I declare 1 think, of all the polite men of that age, 
Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman. And they were 
good, as well as witty and wise, those <lear old friends of the 
past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or effemi- 
nate with luxury. They toiled their noble day's labor : they 
rested, and took their kindly pleasure : they cheered their holi- 
day meetings with generous wit and heaity interchange of 
thought : they were no prudes, but no blush need follow their 
conversation : they were merry, but no riot came out of their 
cups. Ah ! I would have liked a night at the " Turk's Head," 
even though bad news had arrived from the colonies, and 
Doctor Johnson was growling against the rebels ; to have sat 
with him and Goldy ; and to have heard Burke, the finest talker 
in the world ; and "to have had Garrick flashing in with a story 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 57 

from his theatre ! — I like, I say, to think of that society ; and 
not merely how pleasant and how wise, but how good they were. 
I think it was on going home one niglit from the club that 
Edmund Burke — his noble soul full of great thoughts, be sure, 
for the}' never left him ; his heart full of gentleness — was 
accosted by a poor wandering woman, to whom he spoke words 
of kindness ; and moved by the tears of this Magdalen, perhaps 
having caused them by the good words he spoke to her, he took 
her home to the house of his wife and children, and never left 
her until he had found the means of restoring her to honesty 
and labor. you line gentlemen I you IMarclies, and Selwyns, 
and Chesterfields, how small you look by the side of these 
great men! Good-natured Carlisle plays at cricket all day, 
and dances in the evening "till he can scarcely crawl," ga3iy 
contrasting his superior virtue with George Selwyn's, " carried 
to bed by two wretches at midnight with three pints of claret 
in him." Do you remember the verses — the sacred verses — 
which Johnson wrote on the death of his humble friend, 
Levett ? 

" Well tried through many a varying year, 
See Levett to the grave descend; 
OflScious, innocent, sincere, 

Of every friendless name the friend. 

"In misery's darkest cavern known, 
His useful care was ever nigli, 
Where hopeless anguish poured tlie groan, 
And lonely want retired to die. 

" No summons mocked by chill delay, 
No pett}' gain disdained hy pride, 
Tiie modest wants of every day 
The toil of every day supplied. 

"His virtues walked their narrow round, 
Nor made a pause, nor left a void; 
Anri sure the Eternal Master found 
His single talent well employed." 

"Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry 
the -wealtliy duke, or Selwyn the wit, or Levett the poor 
physician ? 

I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell 
some errors for embalming him for us?) to be thegreat su[)|jorter 
of the British monarchv and church durino* the hist aoe — better 
than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, Norths, and 
the great Burke himself. Johnson had the ear of the nation : 



58 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

his immense anthorih' reconciled it to 103'altv, and shamed it 
out of iiTcligion. When George III. talked with him, and the 
people heard the great author's good opinion of the sovereign, 
whole generations rallied to the King. Johnson was revered 
as a sort of oracle ; and the oracle declared for church and 
king. What a hunianit}' the old man had ! He was a kindly 
partaker of all honest pleasures : a fierce foe to all sin, but 
a gentle enemv to all sinners. '^Wliat, boys, are you for a 
frolic?" he cries, when Topliam Beauclerc conies and wakes 
him up at midnight: " I'm with you." And away he goes, 
tumbles on his homelv old clothes, and trundles throuoh Co- 
vent Garden with the young fellows. AV^hen he used to frequent 
Garrick's theatre, and had "• the liberty of the scenes," he sa3's, 
*' All the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curts}' as they 
passed to the stage." That would make a prettA* picture : it is 
a pretty picture in ni}' mind, of youth, lolly, gayetj', tenderly 
surveyed by wisdom's merciful, pui'c ejes. 

George III. and his Queen lived in a very nnpretending but 
elegant-looking house, on the site of the hideous pile under 
which his granddaughter at present reposes. The King's 
mother inhabited Carlton House, which contemporary prints 
represent with a perfect paradise of a garden, with trim lawns, 
green arcades, and vistas of classic statues. She admired these 
in company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine classic taste, 
and sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the pleasant 
green arbors along with that polite nobleman. Bute was hated 
witli a rage of which there have been few examples in English 
history. He was the butt for everybody's abuse ; for Wilkes's 
devilish mischief; for Cinn-chill's slashing satire; for the hoot- 
ing of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a thousand 
bonfii-es; that hated him l)ecause lie was a fiivorite and a 
Scotchman, calling liiin ''Mortimer," ''Lothario," I know not 
what names, and accusino- his roval mistress of all sorts of 
crimes — the grave, lean, demure elderly woman, who, I dare 
say, was ciuite as good as her neighbors. Chatham lent the aid 
of his great mahce to influence the popular sentiment against 
her. He assailed, iu the House of Lords, " the secret influence, 
more mighty than the throne itself, which betrayed and clogged 
every administration." The most furious pamphlets echoed 
the cry. " Iiwpeacli the King's mother," was scribbled over 
every wall at tlie Court end of the town, Wal[)ole tells us. 
What had she done? What had Frederick, Prince of Wales, 
George's father, done, that he was so loathed by George II. 
and never mentioned by George III.? Let us not seek for 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 59 

stones to batter that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the con- 
temporary epitaph over him : — 

"Here lies Fred, 
Who was alive, and is dead. • 
Had it been his fatlier, 
I had much i:ather. 
Had it been his brother, 
* Still better than another. 

Had it been his sister, 
No one would have missed Iter. 
Had it been the whole generation, 
Siill better for the nation. 
But since 'tis oidy Fred, 
Who was alive, and is dead. 
There's no more to be said." 

The widow, with eight children round her, prudent!}' recor* 
ciled herself with the King, and won the old man's eonlidence 
and good-will. A shrewd, hard, domineering, narrow-minded 
woman, she educated her children according to her lights, and 
spoke of the eldest as a dull, good boy: she kept him very 
close : she held the tightest rein over him : she had curious 
prejudices and bigotries. His uncle, the burl}^ Cumberland, 
taking down a sabre once, and drawing it to amuse the child — 
the boy started back and turned pale. The Prince felt a 
generous shock : " What must they have told him about me? " 
he asked. 

His mother's bigotry and hatred he inherited with the coura- 
geous obstinacy of his own race ; but he was a hrm believer 
where his fathers had been free-thinkers, and a true and fond 
supporter of the Cluu'ch, of which he was the titular defender. 
Like other dull men, the King was all his life suspicious of 
superior people. He did not like Fox ; he did not like Rey- 
nolds ; he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke ; he was testy 
at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. 
He loved mediocrities ; Benjamin West was his favorite painter ; 
Beattie was his poet. The King lamented, not without pathos, 
in his afterlife, that his education iiad been neglected. He was 
a dull lad brought up by narrow-minded people. The cleverest 
tutors in the world could have done little probably to expand 
that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, 
and tatight his perceptions some generosity. 

But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt 
that a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte of Mecklen- 
burg Strelitz, — a letter containing the most feeble common- 
places about the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks on 



60 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

the blessings of peace, struck the young monarch greatly, and 
deckled him upon selecting the young Princess as the siiarer of 
his throne. I i)ass over tlie stories of iiis juvenile loves — 
of Mannnli Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom tliey say he was 
actually married* (though I don't know who has ever seen the 
register) — of loveh' l)lack-haired Sarah Lennox, about whose 
beauty Walpole has written in raptures, and who used to lie in 
wait for the vouuii,' Prince, and make hav at him on the lawn of 
Holland House. He sighed and he longed, but he rode away 
from her. Her picture still hangs in Holland House, a magnifi- 
cent masterpiece of Reynolds, a canvas woi'thy of Titian. She 
looks from the castle window, holding a bird in her hand, at 
black-eyed young Charles Fox, her ne[)hew. The royal bird 
flew away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as bridesmaid 
at her little jMecklenhuro" rival's weddiu"*, and died in our own 
time a quiet old lady, who had become the mother of the heroic 
Napiers. 

Tliey say the little Princess who had written the fine letter 
about the horrors of war — a beautiful letter without a single blot, 
lor which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spell- 
ing-book story — was at \)\i\y one da}' with some of her young 
companions in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the 3 oung ladies' 
conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. '-'- Who will 
take such a poor little princess as me?" Charlotte said to her 
friend, Itla von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman's 
horn sounded, and Ida said, ''Princess I there is the sweet- 
heart." As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman 
brought letters from the splendid young King of all England, 
who said, •'• Princess! because you have written such a beauti- 
ful letter, which does credit to your head and heart, come and 
be Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the true 
•wife of your most obedient servant, Geoi-ge ! " So she jumped 
for joy ; and went up stairs and packed all her little trunks ; and 
set off straiiihtwav for her kingdom in a beautiful vacht, with 
a harpsichord on board for her to play upon, and around her a 
beautiful fleet, all covered with flags and streamers: and the 
distinguished jNIadame Auerbach complimented her with an ode, 
a translation of which may be read in the Gentkmaris iMayazine 
to the present day : — 

" Her cnllant navy tlirougli the main 
Now cleaves its liquid way. 
There to tlieir queen a chosen train 
Of nymphs due reverence iiay. 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 61 

_ "Enropa, when conveyed by Jove 

To Crete's distiiiguislied shore, 
Greater attention scarce could prove, 
Or be respected more." 

The}' met, and they were married, and for years they led the 
happiest, simplest lives sure ever led by married coiii)le. It is 
said the King winced when he first saw his homely little bride ; 
but, however that may be, he wns ji true and laithlul husband 
to her, as she was a faith fnl and loving wife. They had the 
simplest pleasures — the very mildest and simplest — little 
countr}^ dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and 
where the honest King would stand up and dance for three 
hours at a time to one lune ; after which delicious excitement 
they would go to bed without any supper (the Coiut people 
grimibling sadl}' at that absence of supper), and get up quite 
early the next morning, and perha[)s the next night have an- 
other dance ; or the Queen would play on the spinet — she 
played pretty well, Haydn said — or the King would read to her 
a paper out of the Spectator, or perhaj)S one of Ogden's ser- 
mons. O Arcadia ! wiuit a life it must have been ! There used 
to be Sundav drawing-rooms at Court ; but the vouno- King 
stopped these, as he 8topi)ed all that godless gambling whereof 
we have made mention. Not that George was averse to any 
innocent pleasures, or pleasiu'es which he thought innocent. 
He was a patron of the arts, after his fashion ; kind and gia- 
cious to the artists whom he favored, and res[)ectfiil to their call- 
ins;. He wanted once to establish an Order of jNIinerva for 
literary and scientific characters ; the knights were to take rank 
after the knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw-colored rib- 
bon and a star of sixteen points. But there was such a row 
amongst the literati as to the persons who shoiikl be appointed, 
that the i)lan was given up, and Minerva and her star never 
came down amongst us. 

He objected to painting St. Paul's, as Popish practice ; ac- 
cordingly, the most clumsy lieathen sculptiu'es decoiate that 
edifice at present. It is fortunate that the i)aintings, too, were 
spared, for painting and drawing were wofiilly unsound at the 
close of the last centiu-y ; and it is fiir better for our eyes to 
contem[)late whitewash (when we turn them away from the 
clergyman) than to look at Opie's pitchy canvases, .or Fuseli's 
livid monsters. 

And yet there is one day in the year — a day when old 
Georo-e loved with all his heart to attend it — when I think St. 
Faui's presents the noblest sight in the whole world : when five 



62 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

thousand charit}- children, with cheeks Uke nosegays, and sweet, 
fresh voices, sinsr the hymn which makes every iieart thrill with 
praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in 
the world — coronations, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace 
openinos, Pope's chapels with their processions of long-tailed 
cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani — but think in all 
Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's Day. 
Hon Angll^ seel urnjeU. As one looks at that beautiful multitude 
of innocents : as the first note strikes : indeed one may almost 
fancy that cherubs are singing. 

(Jf church music the King was always very fond, showing 
skill in it both as a critic and a performer. Many stories, mirth- 
ful and affectino-, are told of his behavior at the concerts which 
he ordered. When he was blind and ill he chose the music 
for the Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words which 
he selected v/ere from '' Samson Agonistes," and all had refer- 
ence to his blindness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would 
beat time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem in the 
Chapel Royal. If the page below was talkatiye or inattentiye, 
down would come the music-roll on young scapegrace's pow- 
dered head. The theatre was always his delight. His bishops 
and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to api)ear 
where that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared 
for Shakspeare or traged}' much ; farces and pantomimes were 
his joy ; and especiall}' when clown swallowed a carrot or a 
string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the 
lovely Princess by his side would have to say, ^'My gracious 
monarch, do compose yourself." But he continued to laugh, 
and at the ver}' smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were 
left him. 

There is something to me exceedingly touching in that' simple 
early life of the Kino's. As lono* as his mother lived — a dozen 
years after his marriage with the little spinet-player — he was a 
great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of that hard parent. 
Siie must have been a clever, domineering, cruel woman. She 
kept her household lonel}' and in gloom, mistrusting almost all 
people who came about her children. Seeing the young Duke 
of Gloucester silent and unhappy' once, she sharply asked him 
the cause of his silence. "■ I am thinking," said the poor child. 
*' Thinking, sir ! and of what? " ''I am thinking if ever I have 
a son I will not make him so unhappy as 3'ou make me." The 
other sons were all wild, except George. Dutifully every even- 
ing George and Charlotte paid their visit to the King's mother 
at Carlton House. She had a throat-complaint, of which she 



GEORGE THE THIRD. G3 

died ; but to the last persisted in di-iving about the streets to 
show slie was alive. ' The night before her death the resolnie 
woman talked with hereon and daughter-in-law as usual, went 
to bed, and was found dead there in the raorning:. '' Georoe, 
be a king- ! " were the words which she was for ever croakinir in 
the ears of lier son : and a king the simple, stubborn, affection- 
ate, bigoted man tried to be. 

He did his best ; he worked according to his lights ; what 
virtue he kne\y, he tried to practise ; what knowledge he could 
master, he strove to acquire. lie was forever drawing maps, for 
example, and learned gcograpliy with no small care and indus- 
ti-y. He knew all about tlie familv histories and uenealoiiies of 
his gentr}-, and pretty histories he must have known. He knew 
the whole Anui/ List ; and all the facings, and the exact number 
of the buttons, and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the 
cocked-hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. He knew the 
personnel of the Universities ; what doctors were inclined to 
Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen ; he knew the eti- 
quettes of his own and his grandfather's courts to a nicet}', and 
the smallest particulars regarding the routine of ministers, sec- 
retaries, embassies, audiences ; the humblest page in the ante- 
room, or the meanest helper in the stables or kitchen. These 
parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, and he 
learned. But, as one thinks of an oflice, almost divine, per- 
formed by any mortal man — of any single being pretending to 
control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the imi)licit 
obedience of brother millions, to compel thcMn into war at his 
offence or quarrel; to command, ''In this way you shall trade, 
in this way you shall think ; these neighbors shall be your allies 
whom 30U shall help, these others your enemies whom you shall 
slay at my orders ; in this way you shall worship God ; " — who 
can wonder that, when such a man as George took such an 
office on himself, punishment and humiliation should Aill upon 
people and chief? 

Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle 
of the King with his aristocracy remains yet to be told b}' 
the historian who shall view the reign of George more justly 
than the trumper}' panegyrists who wrote immediately after his 
decease. It was he, with the people to back him, who made 
the war with America ; it was he and the people who refused 
justice to the Roman Catholics ; and on both questions lie beat 
the patricians. He bribed : he bullied : he darkh' dissembled 
on occasion : he exercised a slipper}* perseverance, and a vin- 
dictive resolution, which one almost admires as one thinks his 



64 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

character over. His courage was never to be beat. It tram- 
pled North under foot; it beat the stiff neck of the younger 
Pitt: even liis illness never conquered »that indomitable spirit. 
As soon as his bi'ain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only 
laid aside when his reason left him : as soon as his hands were 
out of the strait waistcoat, they took up the pen and- the plan 
which had engaged him up to the moment of his malady, i 
believe it is by persons believing themselves in the right that 
nine-tenths of the tyranny of this world has Ijeen i)erpetrated. 
AriTuino; on that convenient premise, the Dey of Algiers would 
cut off twentv heads of a mornins: ; Father Dominic would 
burn a score of Jews in the presence of the Most Catholic 
King, and the Archbishops of Toledo and Salamanca sing 
Amen. Protestants were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered 
at Smithfield, and witches burned at Salem, and all by worthy 
people, who believed they had the best authority for their 
actions. 

And so, with respect to old George, even Americans, whom 
he hated and who conquered liim, may give him credit Tor hav- 
ing quite honest reasons for oppressing theui. Appended to 
Lord Brougham's biographical sketch of Lord North are some 
autograph notes of the King, which let us most curiously into 
the state of his mind. '' The times certainly require," says he, 
'^ the concurrence of all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have 
no wish but the prosperity of my own dominions, therefore I 
must look upon all who would not heartily assist me as bad 
men, as well as bad subjects." That is tlie way he reasoned. 
'' I wish nothing but good, therefore cycry man wiio docs not 
agree with me is a traitor and a scoundiel." Ixemember that 
he believed himself anointed by a Divine commission : remem- 
ber that he was a man of slow parts and im[)erfect education ; 
that the same awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon 
his head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his 
life, courageous and honest, made him dull of compreiiension, 
obstinate of will, and at many times deprived iiim of reason. 
He was the fatiier of his people ; his rebellious children muse 
be flogged into obedience. He was the defender of the Prot- 
estant faith ; he would rather lay that stout head upon the block 
than that Catholics should ha\'c a share in the government of 
F^ngland. And you do not supi)Ose that there are not honest 
bigots enough in all countries to back kings in this kind of 
statesmanship? AVithout doubt the American war was popular 
in England. In 1775 the address in favor of coercing the colo- 
nies was carried by 304 to 105 in the Commons, by 104 to 29 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 65 

in the House of Lords. Popular? — so was the Revocation of 
the EclicL of Nantes popular in France : so was the massacre of 
8t. Bartholomew : so was the Inquisition exceedingly popular 
in Spain. 

Wars and revolutions are, however, the politician's province. 
The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators 
who illustrated it, T do not pretend to make the subjects of an 
hour's light talk. Let us return to our humbler duty of court 
gossip. Yonder sits our little Queen, surrounded b}' many 
stout sons and fair daughters whom she bore to her faithful 
George. The history of the daughters, as little Miss Burne}' 
has painted them to us, is delightful. They were handsome — 
she calls them beautiful; they were most kind, loving and 
lad3'-like ; they were gracious to every person, high and low, 
who served tliem. They had many little accomi)lishments of 
theii" own. This one drew : that one played the piano : they 
all worked most i)rodigiously, and fitted up whole suites of 
rooms — prett}' smiling Penelopes, — with their busy little nee- 
dles. As we picture to oursehes the society of eighty years 
ago, we must imagine hundreds of thousands of groups of 
women in great high caps, tight bodies, and lull skirts, nee- 
dling away, whilst one of the number, or perhaps a favored 
gentleman in a pigtail, reads out a novel to the company. 
Peep into the cottage at Olne}', for example, and see there 
Mrs. Unwin and Lady Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, those 
sweet, pious women, and William Cowper, that delicate wit, 
that trembling pietist, that refined gentleman, absolutely read- 
ing out Jonathan Wild to the ladies! Wiiat a change in our 
manners, in our amusements, since then ! 

King George's household was a model of an English gentle- 
man's household. It was early ; it was kindly; it was chaiita- 
ble ; it was frugal ; it was orderly ; it must have been stupid to 
a degree which 1 shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all 
the princes I'an away from the lap of that dreary- domestic virtue. 
It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals. Day after day 
was the same. At the same hour at night the King kissed his 
daughters' jollv cheeks ; the Princesses kissed their mother's 
hand ; and Madame Tiiielke brought the royal nightcajj. At 
the same iiour the equerries and women in waiting had their 
little dinner,- and cackled over their tea. The King had his 
backgammon or his evening concert ; the equerries yawned 
themselves to death in the ante-room ; or the King and his 
family walked on Windsor slopes, the King holding his darling 
little Princess Amelia by the hand; and the people crowded 

5 



6Q THE FOUR GEORGES. 

round quite good-naturedly' ; and the Eton boj's thrust their 
chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows ; and the concert over, 
the King never failed to take his enormous cocked-hat off, and 
salute his band, and say, ''Thank you, gentlemen." 

A quieter household, a more prosaic hfe than this of Kew or 
Windsor, cannot be imagined. Rain or shine, the King rode 
ever\' day for hours ; i)oked his red face into hundi'eds of 
cottaires round about, and showed that shovel hat and Windsor 
uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to okl women making apple 
dumplings ; to all sorts of people, gentle and simple, about 
whom countless stories are told. Nothing can be more undig- 
nified than these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a 
subject incog., the latter is sure to be very much the better for 
the caliph's magnificence. Old George showx^d no such royal 
splendor. He used to give a guinea sometimes : sometimes 
feel in his pockets and find he had no money : often ask a man 
a hundred questions : about the number of his family, about his 
oats and beans, about the rent he paid for his house, and I'ide 
on. On one occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and 
turned a piece of meat with a string at a cottager's house. 
When the old woman came home, she found a paper with an 
enclosure of money, and a note written by the royal pencil : 
" Five guineas to buy a jack." It was not splendid, but it was 
kind and worth}- of Farmer George. One day, when the King 
and Queen were walking together, they met a little boy — they 
were always fond of children, the good folks — and patted the 
little white head. " Whose little boy are you ? " asks the Wind- 
sor luiiform. '• I am the King's beef-eater's little bo}," replied 
the child. On which the King said, "• Then kneel down, and 
kiss the Queen's hand." But the innocent offspring of the beef- 
eater declined this treat. "No," said he, •' I won't kneel, for 
if I do, 1 shall spoil my new breeches." The thrifty King ought 
to have hugged him and knighted him on the spot. George's 
admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories about him. 
One morning, before anybody else was up, the King walked 
about Gloucester town ; pushed over Molh' the housemaid with 
her pail, who was scrubbing the doorsteps ; ran up stairs and 
woke all the equerries in their bedrooms ; and then trotted 
down to the bridge, where, by this time, a dozen of louts were 
assembled. "What! is this Gloucester New Bridge?" asked 
our gracious monarch; and the people answered him, "Yes, 
your Majesty." "Why, then, m\' boys," said he, "let us 
have a hu^zay ! " After giving them w^iich intellectual grati- 
fication, he went home to breakfast. Our fathers read these 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 67 

simple tales with fond pleasure ; laughed at these a'cit small 
jokes ; liked the old man who i)oked his nose into every 
cottage ; who lived on plain wholesome roast and boiled ; 
who despised your French kickshaws ; who was a true hearty 
old English gentleman. You may have seen Gilray's famous 
print of him — in the old wig, in the stout old hideous Wind- 
sor uniform — as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little 
Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other 
he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pigmy. 
Our fathers chose to set up George as the type of a great 
king ; and the little GuUiver was the great Napoleon. We 
pi'ided ourselves on our prejudices ; we blustered and bragged 
with absurd vainglory ; we dealt to our enemy a monstrous 
injustice of contempt and scorn ; we fought him with all 
weapons, mean as well as heroic. There was no lie we 
would not believe ; no charge of crime which our furious preju- 
dice would not credit. 1 thought at one time of making a col- 
lection of the lies which the French had written against us, and 
we had published against them dining the war : it would be a 
strange memorial of popular falseiiood. 

Their Majesties were very sociable potentates : and the 
Court Chronicler tells of numerous visits which they paid to 
their sul)jects, gentle and simple : with whom they dined ; at 
whose great country-houses they stoii^jed ; or at whose poorer 
lodgings they alfal)ly partook of tea and bread and butter. 
Some of the great folks spent enormous sums in entertaining 
theii- sovereigns. As marks of special favor, the King and 
Queen sometimes stood as sponsors for the children of the no- 
bility. We tind Lady Salisbury was so honored in the year 
178G ; and m the year 'l802, Lady Chesterfield. The Court News 
relates how her ladyship received tlieir Majesties on a state bed 
" dressed with white satin and a profusion of lace : the counter- 
pane of white satin embroidered with gold, and the bed of crim- 
son satin lined with white." The chikl was first brought by the 
nurse to the Marcliioness of Bath, wiio presided as chief nurse. 
Then the Marcrhioness handed baby to the Queen. Then the 
Queen handed the little darling to the Bishop of Norwich, the 
officiating clergyman ; and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle 
was presentcd'by the Earl to his Majesty, on one knee, on a 
large gold waiter, placed on a crimson velvet cushion. Misfor- 
tunes would occur in these interesting gennflectory ceremonies of 
royal worship. Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe, a very fat, 
piitfy man, in a most gorgeous court-suit, had to kneel, Cum- 
berland says, and was so fat and so tight that he could not get 



68 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

up again. " Kneel, sir, kneel ! " cried ni}' lord in waiting to a 
country mayor, wlio had to read an address, but who went on 
with his compliment standing. " Kneel, sir, kneel !" cries m}'' 
lord, in dreadful alarm. " 1 can't!" says the ma3'or, turning 
round; "don't you see I have got a wooden leg?" In the 
capital " Burney Diary and Letters," the home and court life of 
good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are pre- 
sented at portentous length. The King rose every morning 
at six : and had two hours to himself. He thought it effeminate 
to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight, the 
Queen and the royal family were always ready for him, and 
they proceeded to the King's chapel in the castle. There were 
no fires in the passages : the chapel was scarcely alight ; prin- 
cesses, governesses, equerries grumbled and caught cold : but 
cold or hot, it was their duty to go : and, wet or dry, light or 
dark, the stout old George was always in his place to say amen 
to the chaplain. 

The Queen's character is represented in "Burney" at full 
length. She was a sensible, most decorous woman ; a very 
grand lady on state occasions, simple enough in ordinar}' life ; 
well read as times went, and giving shrewd opinions about 
books ; stingy,, but not unjust ; not generally unkind to her de- 
pendants, but invincible in her notions of etiquette, and quite 
angry if her people suffered ill-health in her service. She gave 
Miss Burney a shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman 
a life which wellnigh killed her. She never thought but that 
she was doing Bm-ne}* the greatest favor in taking her from 
freedom, fame, and competence, and killing her off with languor 
in that drearv court. It was not dreai'v to her. Had she been 
servant instead of mistress, her spirit would never li*ive broken 
down ; she never would have put a \)m out of place, or been a 
moment from her duty. She was not weak, and she could not 
pardon those who were. She was perfectl}' correct in life, and 
she hated poor simiers with a rancor such as virtue sometimes 
has. She must have had awful private trials of her own : not 
merely with her children, but with hei* husband, in those long- 
days about which nobody will ever know anything now; when 
he was not quite insane ; when his incessant tongue was bab- 
bling folly, rage, persecution ; and she had to smile and be re- 
spectful and attentive under this intolerable ennui. The Queen 
bore all her duties stoutly, as she expected others to bear them. 
At a State christening, the lady who held the infant was tired 
and looked unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission 
for her to sit down. " Let her stand," said the Queen, flicking 



GEORGE THE THIRD. 69 

the smiffoff her sleeve. She would have stood, the resolute old 
woman, if she had had to hold the child till his beard was grown. 
*'I am sevent}' years of age," the Queen said, facing a mob of 
ruffians who stopped her sedan: ''I have been fifty 3*ears 
Queen of England, and I never was insulted before." Fearless, 
rigid, unforgiving little queen ! 1 don't wonder that her sons 
revolted from her. 

Of all the figures in that large famil}^ group which surrounds 
George and his Queen, the prettiest, I think, is the father's 
darling, the Princess Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her 
sweetness, her early death, and for the extreme passionate 
tenderness with which her father loved her. This was his 
favorite amongst all the children : of his sons, he loved the 
Duke of York best. Burney tells a sad story of the poor old 
man at Weymouth, and how eager he was to have this darling 
son with him. The King's house was not big enough to hold 
the Prince ; and his father had a portable house erected close 
to his own, and at huge pains, so that his dear Frederick should 
be near him. He clung on his arm all the time of Jiis visit : 
talked to no one else ; had talked of no one else for some time 
before. The Prince, so long expected, stayed but a single 
night. He had business in London the next day, he said. 
The dulness of the old King's court stupefied York and the 
other big sons of George III. They scared equerries and 
ladies, frightened the modest little circle, with their coarse 
spirits and loud talk. Of little comfort, indeed, were the 
King's sons to the King. 

But the pretty Amelia was his darling ; and the little maiden, 
prattling and smiling in the fond arms of tliat old father, is a 
sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in Burney, 
which a man must be hard-hearted not to like. She describes 
an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor: — ""It 
was really a mighty pretty procession," she says. "The little 
Princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered 
with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, 
walked on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, 
and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed ; 
for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make a clear 
passage for the i-oyal family the moment they come in sight. 
Then followed the King and Queen, no less delighted with the 
joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on Lad}' 
Elizabeth AValdeorave, the Princess Auousta holdiuo- by the 
Duchess of Ancaster. the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Char- 
lotte Bertie, followed. Office here takes place of rank," says 



70 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

Burne}', — to explain how it was that Lady E. Waldegrave, 
as lad}' of the bedchamber, walked before a duchess ; — '' Gen- 
eral Bude, and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as 
equerry, brought up the rear of the procession." One sees it; 
the band playing its old music, the sun shining on the happy, 
loyal crowd ; and lighting the ancient battlements, the rich 
elms, and purple landscape, and bright greensward ; the royal 
standard drooping from the great tower yonder ; as old George 
passes, followed by his race, preceded by the charming infant, 
who caresses the crowd with her innocent smiles. 

"On sight of Mrs. Delany, the King instantly stopped to 
speak to her ; the Queen, of course, and the little Princess, 
and all the rest, stood still. They talked a good while with 
the sweet old lady, during which time the King once or twice 
addressed himself to me. I caught the Queen's eye, and saw 
in it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure, to see 
me of the party. The little Princess went up to Mrs. Delany, 
of whom she is very fond, and behaved like a little angel to 
her. She then, with a look of inquiry and recollection, came 
behind Mrs. Delany to look at me. 'I am afraid,' said I, in a 
whisper, and stooping down, 'your Poyal Highness does not 
remember me?' Her answer was an arch little smile, and a 
nearer approach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me." 

The Princess wrote verses herself, and lliere are some pretty 
plaintive lines attributed to her, which are more touching than 
better poetry : — 

" Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, 
I lauglied, and danced, and talked, and sung : 
And, proud of health, of freedom vain, 
Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain ; 
Concluding, in those hours of glee, 
That all tlie world was made for nie. 

" But when the hour of trial came. 
When sickness shook tliis trembling frame, 
When folly's gay pursuits were o'er, 
And I could sing and dance no more, 
It then occurred, how sad 'twould be, 
Were this world only made for me." 

The poor soul quitted it — and ere yet she was dead the 
agonized father was in such a state, that the officers round 
about him were obhged to set watchers over him, and from 
November, 1810, George III. ceased to reign. All the world 
knows the story of his malady : all history presents no sadder 
figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, 



GEOKGE THE THIRD. . 71 

wandevino- through the rooms of his palace, addressing imagi- 
nary parHaments° reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly 
courts. I have seen his i)icture as it was taken at this tune, 
hano-ino- in the apartment of liis daughter, the Landgravine of 
Hesle Homboui-g — amidst booivs and Windsor furniture, and 
a Innidred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor 
old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard 
fallino' over his breast — the star of his famous Order still idly 
sMniiT"- on it. He was not only sigiitless : he became utterly 
deaf. '^All lio-ht, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the 
pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some 
slio-ht lucid moments he had ; in one of which, the Queen, desir- 
ing to see him, entered the room, and found him suigmg a 
hfmn, and accompanving himself at the harpsichord, When 
he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and 
then for his familv, and then fur the nation, concluding with a 
praver for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy 
calamitv from him, but if not, to give him resignation to sub- 
mit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again tied. 

What preacher need moralize on this story ; what words save 
the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. 
The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission 
before tlie'^Ruler of kings and 'men, the Monarch Supreme over 
empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, 
happiness, victorv. ^^O brothers," I said to those who heard 
me (irst in America --''O brothers! speaking the same dear 
mother tongue — O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a 
mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and 
call a truce to battle ! Low he lies to whom the proudest used 
to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest: dead, 
whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne ; buf- 
feted by rude hands ; with his children in revolt ; the darling of 
his old" age killed before him untimely ; our Lear hangs over 
her breathless lips and cries, ' Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little . 

* Vox not liis ghost — o\\ ! let liim pass — he hates him 
That wouUl upon the rack of this tough world 
Stretch him out longer! ' 

Hush! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, 
trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his 
pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy." 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 



In Twiss's amusing " Life of Eldon," we read how, on the 
death of tlic Duke of York, the ohl cliancellor became possessed 
of a lock of the defunct Prince's hair ; and so careful was he 
respecting the authenticity of the relic, that Bessy Eldon his 
wife sat in the room with the young man from Hamlet's, who 
distributed the ringlet into separate lockets, which each of the 
Eldon famil}' afterwards wore. You know how, when George 
IV. came to Edinburgh, a better man than he went on board 
the royal yacht to welcome the King to his kingdom of S<*ot- 
land, seized a goblet from which his Majesty had just drunk, 
vowed it should remain for ever as an heirloom in his family, 
cla[)ped the precious glass in his pocket, and sat down on it 
and broke it when he got home. Suppose the good sheriffs 
l)rizc unbroken now at Abbotsford, should we not smile with 
something like pity as we beheld it? .Supi)ose one of those 
lockets of the no-Popery Prince's hair offered for sale at Chris- 
tie's, qiiot lilmis e rhice sunimo invenies2 ho^v many pounds would 
you finu for the ilhistrious Duke? Madame Tnssaud has got 
Kino- Georoe's coronation robes; is there any man now alive 
who would kiss the hem of that trumi)ery.'' He sleeps since 
thirty years: do not any of you, who remember him, wonder 
that you once respected and huzza'd and admired him? 

To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small 
difficulty. There is his coat, his star^ his wig, his coimtenance 
simpering under it : with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could 
at this very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. And 
yet after reading of him in scores of volnmes, hunting him 
through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a 
ball, there at a public dinner, there at races and so forth, you 




GEORGE IV. 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 73 

find you have nothing — nothing but a coat and a wig and a 
mask smiling below it — nothing but a great simulacrum. His 
sii-e and grandsires were men. One knows what they Avcro 
like : what they would do in given circumstances : tlirat on 
occasion thev ibuoht and demeaned themselves like toush 
ojood soldiers. The\- had friends whom thev liked accordino: 
to their natures : enemies whom they hated fiercely ; passions, 
and actions, and individualities of their own. The sailor King 
who came after George was a man : the Duke of York was 
a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this 
George, what was he? I look through all his life, and recog- 
nize but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and 
find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur 
collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief pro- 
digiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs 
reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, undcr- 
•waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothinj^. I know 
of no sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. Documents 
are published under his name, but people wrote them — piivate 
letters, but people spelt them. He [)ut a great George P. or 
George R. at the bottom of the page and fancied he had writ- 
ten the paper : some bookseller's clerk, some poor author, 
some man did the work ; saw to the spoiling, cleaned u[) the 
slovenly sentences, and gave the lax maudlin sli[)slop a sort 
of consistency. He must have had an individuality : the dan- 
cing-master whom he emulated, nay, surpassed — the wig-maker 
who curled his toupee for him — the tailor who cut his coats, 
had that. But, about George, one can get at nothing actual. 
That outside, I am certain, is pad and tailor's Avork ; there 
may be something behind, but what? AVe cannot get at the 
character; no doubt never shall. Will men of the future have 
nothiuiT better to do than to unswathe and interpret that roval 
old mummy? I own I once used to think it would be good 
sport to pursue him, fasten on him, and pull him down. But 
now I am ashamed to moimt and lay good dogs on, to sum- 
mon a full field, and then to hunt the poor game. 

On the 12tli August, 17G2, the forty-seventh anniversary 
of the accession of the House of Brunswick to the English 
throne, all the bells in London pealed in gratulation, and an- 
nounced that an heir to George III. was born. Five days after- 
wards the King was pleased to pass letters [)atent under the 
great seal, creating H. R. H. the Prince of Great Britain, Elec- 
toral Prince of Brunswick Luneburg, Duke of Cornwall and 
Rothsav. Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, 



74 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

and Great Steward of Scotland, Prince of Wales and Earl of 
Chester. 

All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child ; 
and behind a gilt china-screen railing in St. James's Palace, in 
a cradle surmounted by the three princely ostrich feathers, the 
royal infant was laid to delight the eyes of the lieges. Among 
the earliest instances of homage paid to him, I read that ''a 
curious Indian bow and arrows were sent to the Prince from 
his father s faithful subjects in New York." He was fond of 
playing with these toys : an old statesman, orator, and Avit 
of ills grandfather's and great-grandfather's time, never tired of 
his business, still eager in his old age to be well at court, used 
to play with the little Prince, and pretend to fall down dead 
when the Prince shot at him with his toy bow and arrows — 
and get up and fall down dead over and over again — to the 
increased delioht of the child. So that he was flattered from 
his cradle ujdwards, and before his little feet could walk, states- 
men and courtiers were bus}" kissing them. 

There is a pretty picture of the royal infant — a beautiful 
buxom child — asleep in his mother's lap; who turns round 
and holds a linger to her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers 
around respect the baby's slumbers. From that da\' until his 
decease, sixty-eight years after, I suppose there were more 
pictures taken of that personage than of any other human 
beins: who ever was born and died — in every kind of uniform 
and every possible court-dress — in long fair hair, with powder, 
with and without a pigtail — in every conceivable cocked-hat 
— in dragoon uniform — in Windsor uniform — in a field-mar- 
shal's clothes — in a Scotch kilt and tartans, with dirk and 
claymore (a stupendous figure) — in a frogged frock-coat with 
a fur collar and tight breeches and silk stockings — in wigs of 
every color, fair, brown, and black — in his famous coronation 
robes finally, with which performance he was so much in love 
that he distributed copies of the picture to all the courts and 
British embassies in Europe, and to numberless clubs, town- 
halls, and private friends. I remember as a 30ung man how 
almost every dining-room had his portrait. 

There is plenty of biographical tattle about the Prince's boy- 
hood. It is told with what astonishing rapidity he learned all 
languages, ancient and modern ; how he rode beautifully, sang 
charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. That he 
was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high spirit : 
and once, when he had had a diflference with his father, bmst 
into the royal closet and called out, "Wilkes and liberty for 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 75 

ever ! " He was so clever, that lie Confounded his ver}' gov- 
ernors in learning; and one of them, Lord Bnicc, having made 
a false quantit}' in quoting Greek, the admirable young Prince 
instantl^y corrected him. Lord Bruce could not remain a gov- 
ernor after this humiliation ; resigned his office, and, to soothe 
his feelings, was actually promoted to be an earl ! It is the 
most wonderful reason for promoting a man that ever I heard. 
Lord Bruce was made an earl for a blunder in prosodj' ; and 
Nelson was made a baron for the victory of the Nile. 

Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions 
which in the course of his brilliant existence this single Prince 
consumed. Besides his income of 50,000/., 70,000/., 100,000/., 
120,000/. a 3'ear, we read of three applications to Parliament: 
debts to tlie amount of 160,000/., of 050,000/. ; besides mys- 
terious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed the proceeds. Wiiat 
did he do for all this mone}? Why was he to have it? If he 
had been a manufacturing town, or a populous rural district, 
or an army of five thousand men, he would not have cost more. 
He, one solitary stout man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor 
light, — what had any mortal done that he should be pam- 
pered so? 

In ]784, when he was twent3'-one 3-ears of age, Carlton 
Palace was given to him, and furnished 1)3' the nation with as 
much luxur3' as could be devised. His pockets were filled with 
money : he said it was not enough ; he flung it out of window : 
he spent 10,000/. a year for the coats on his back. The nation 
gave him more money, and more, and more. The sum is past 
counting. He was a prince most loveh^ to look on, and was 
christened Prince Florizel on his first appearance in the world. 
That he was the handsomest prince in the whole world was 
agreed by men, and alas ! by many women. 

I suppose he must have been very graceful. There are so 
many testimonies to the charm of his manner, that we must 
allow him great elegance and powers of fascination. He, and 
the King of France's brother, the Count d'Artois, a charming 
young Prince who danced deliciousl3' on the tigiit-rope — a 
poor old tottering exiled King, who asked hospitality of King 
George's successor, and lived awhile in the palace of Mary 
Stuart — divided in their 30uth the title of first gentleman of 
Europe. We in England of course gave the prize to our gen- 
tleman. Until George's death the propriet3' ^^ ^'^^^^ award was 
scarce questioned, or the doubters voted rebels and traitors. 
Onlv the other day I was reading in the reprint of the delightful 
*' Noctes " of Christopher North. The health of THE KING 



76 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

is drunk in large capitall by the loyal Scotsman. Yon wonld 
fancy him a hero, a sage, a statesman, a pattern for kings and 
men. It was Walter 8cott who had that accident with tlic 
broken glass I spoke of anon. He was the king's Scottish 
champion, rallied all Scotland to him, made loyalty the fashion, 
and laid about him liercely with his claymore upon all tlie 
Prince's enemies. The Brunswicks had no such defenders as 
those two Jacobite commoners, old Sam Jolmson the Lichfield 
chapman's son, and Walter Scott, the Edinburgh lawyer's. 

Nature and circumstance had done their utmost to prepare 
the Prince for being spoiled: the dreadful dulness of papa's 
court, its stupid anuisements, its dreary occupations, the mad- 
dening humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have 
made a scapegrace of a much less lively prince. All the big 
princes bolted from that castle of enmii where old King Geoi'gc 
sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel ; and 
old Queen Charlotte over her snutt* and her tambour-frame. 
Most of the sturdv. o'allant sons settled down after sowino- their 
wild oats, and became sober subjects of Iheir father and brother 
— not ill liked by the nation, which pardons youthful irregu- 
larities readily enough, for the sake of pluck, and unafTected- 
ness, and good-humor. 

The boy is father of the man. Our Prince signalized his 
entrance into the Avorld by a feat worthy of his future life. He 
invented a new shoebuckle. It was an inch long and five inches 
broad. '' It covered almost the whole instep, reaching down 
to the ground on either side of the foot." A sweet inventi(jn ! 
lovely and useful as the Prince on whose foot it sparkled. At 
his first appearance at a court ball, avc read that '• his coat was 
pink silk, with white cuffs : his waistcoat white silk, embroid- 
ered with various-colored foil, and adorned with a profusion of 
French i)aste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of 
steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and loop 
of the same metal, and cocked in a new military style." AVhat 
a Florizel ! Do these details seem trivial? They are the grave 
incidents of his life. His biographers say that when he com- 
menced housekeeping in that splendid new palace of his, the 
Prince of Wales had^ome windy proje(,-ts of encouraging litera- 
ture, science, and the arts ; of having assemblies of literary 
characters; and societies for the encouragement of geography, 
astronomy, and botany. Astronomy, geography, and botany ! 
Fiddlesticks ! Frencii ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse- 
jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, 
chiua, jewel, and gimcrack merchants — these were his real 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 77 

companions. At first he made a pretence of having Burke and 
Fox and Slieridan for his friends. But how could such men be 
serious before such an empty scapegrace as this lad? Fox 
might talk dice with him, and Sheridan wine; but what else 
had these men of genius in connnon with their tawdry young 
host of Carlton House? That fribble the leader of such men 
as Fox and Burke ! That man's opinions about the constitu- 
tion, the India Bill, justice to the Catholics — about any ques- 
tion graver than the button for a waistcoat or the sauce for 
a partridge — worth anything ! The friendship between the 
Prince and the Whig chiefs was impossible. The}* were hypo- 
crites in pretending to respect him, and if he broke the hollow 
compact between them, who shall blame him? His natural 
companions were dandies and parasites. He could talk to a 
tailor or a cook ; but, as the equal of great statesmen, to set 
lip a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous 
vanitv, and levitv incurable — it is absurd. Thev thought to 
use him, and did for a while; but the}' must have known how 
timid he was ; how entirel}' heartless and treacherous, and have 
expected his desertion. His next set of friends were mere 
table companions, of whom he grew tired too ; then we hear of 
liim with a veiy few select toadies, mere boys fi'oin school or 
the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled the lancv of the worn- 
out voluptuary. AVhat matters what friends he had? He 
dropped all his friends ; he never could have real friends. An 
heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who hang about 
him, ambitious men who use him ; but friendship is denied him. 

And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their 
dealings with such a character as men. Shall we take the 
Leporello part, flourish a catalogue of the conquests of this royal 
Don Juan, and tell the names of the favorites to whom, one after 
the othei-, George Prince flung his pocket-handkerchief? What 
purpose would it answer to say how Perdita was pursued, won, 
deserted, and bv whom succeeded? AVhat Qood in knowino* that 
he did actuallv marrv Mrs. Fitz-Herbert accordino- to the rites of 
the Roman Catholic Church ; that her marriage settlements have 
been seen in London ; that the names of the witnesses to her 
marriage arc known ? This soit of A'ice that we are now come 
to presents no new or fleeting trait of manners. Debauchees, 
dissolute, heartless, flckle, cowardly, have been ever since the 
world began. This one had more temptations than most, and 
so much mav be said in extenuation for him. 

It was an nnluckv thing for this doomed one, and tending 
to lead him vet farther on the road to the deuce, that, besides 



78 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

being lovely, so that women were fascinated b}' him ; and heir- 
apparent, so that all the world flattered him ; he should have a 
beautiful voice, which led him directl}' in the way of drink : and 
thus all the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor Florizel ; 
desire, and idleness, and vanit}', and drunkenness, all clashing' 
their merry cymbals and bidding him come on. 

We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the 
walls of Kew Palace by the moonlight banks of. Thames, with 
Lord Viscount Leporello keeping watch lest the music should 
be disturbed. 

Singing after dinner and 'supper was the universal fashion of 
the day. You may fanc^' all England sounding with choruses, 
some ribald, some harmless, but all occasioning the consump- 
tion of a prodigious deal of fermented liquor. 

" The jolly Muse her wings to try no frolic flights need take, 
But round the bowl would dip and fly, like swallows round a lake," 

sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the 
Prince many a time joined in chorus, and of which the bur- 
den is, — 

" And that I think's a reason fair to drink and fill again." 

This delightful boon companion of the Prince's found *' a 
reason fair" to forego filling and drinking, saw the error of his 
ways, gave up the bowl and chorus, and died retired and re- 
ligious. The Prince's table no doubt was a very tempting one. 
The wits came and did their utmost to amnse him. It is won- 
derful how the si)irits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an 
aroma, when a great man is at the head of the table. Scott, the 
loyal cavalier, the king's true liegeman, the A-ery best raconteur 
of his time, poured out with an endless generosity his store of 
old-world learning, kindness, and humor. Grattan contributed 
to it his wondrous eloquence, fancy, feeling. Tom Moore 
perched upon it for a while, and piped his most exquisite little 
love-tunes on it, flying away in a twitter of indignation after- 
wards, and attacking the Prince with bill and claw. In such 
society, no wonder the sitting was long, and the butler tired of 
drawlno coi-ks. Remember what the usages of the time were, 
and that William Pitt, coming to the House of Commons after 
having drunk a bottle of port-wine at his own house, would go 
into Bellamy's with Dundas, and help finish a couple more. 

You peruse volumes after volumes about our Prince, and find 
some half-dozen stock stories — indeed not many more — com- 
mon to all the histories. He was good-natured ; an indolent, 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 79 

voluptuous prince, not unkincll}-. One story, the most favora- 
ble to him of all, perhaps, is that as Prince Regent he was eager 
to hear all that could be said in behalf of prisoners condemned 
to death, and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital sentence. 
He was kind to his servants. There is a stor}^ common to all 
the biographies, of Moll}' the housemaid, who, when his house- 
hold was to be broken up, owing to some reforms which he tried 
absurdl}" to practise, was discovered cr3'ing as she dusted the 
chairs because she was to leave a master who had a kind word 
for all his servants. Another tale is that of a groom of the 
Prince's being discovered in corn and oat peculations, and dis- 
missed b}^ the personage at the head of the stables ; the Prince 
had word of John's disgrace, remonstrated with him ver}- kindl}', 
generousl}^ reinstated him, and bade him promise to sin no 
more — a promise which John kept. Another story is very 
fondl}^ told of the Prince as a young man hearing of an officer's 
famil}^ in distress, and how he straightwa}'^ borrowed six or 
eight hundred pounds, put his long fair hair under his hat, and 
so disguised carried the mone}' to the starving family. He sent 
mone}', too, to Sheridan on his death-bed, and would have 
sent more had not death ended the career of that man of genius. 
Besides these, there are a few prett}^ speeches, kind and grace- 
ful, to persons with whom he was brought in contact. But he 
turned upon twent}' friends. He was fond and familiar with 
them one da}^ and he passed them on the next without recogni- 
tion. He used them, liked them, loved them perhaps in his 
way, and then separated from them. On Monda}- he kissed 
and fondled poor Perdita, and on Tuesda}' he met her and did 
not know her. On Wednesday he was ver}^ affectionate with that 
wretched Brummell, and on Thursday forgot him ; cheated him 
even out of a snuff-box which he owed the poor dandy ; saw him 
years afterwards in his downfall and poverty, when the bank- 
rupt Beau sent him another snuff-box with some of the snuff he 
used to love, as a piteous token of remembrance and submis- 
sion, and the King took the snuff, and ordered his horses and 
drove on, and had not the grace to notice his old companion, 
favorite, rival, enemy, superior. In Wraxall there is some 
gossip about him. When the charming, beautiful, generous 
Duchess of Devonshire died — the lovely lady whom he used 
to call his dearest Duchess once, and pretend to admire as all 
English society admired her — ^he said, " Then we have lost the 
best bred woman in England." " Then we have lost the kind- 
est heart in England," said noble Charles Fox. On another 
occasion, when three noblemen were to receive tlie Garter, says 



80 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

Wraxall, "A great personage observed that never did three 
men receive the order in so characteristic a manner. The 
Duke of A. advanced to the sovereign with a phlegmatic, cold, 
awkward air like a clown ; Lord B. came forward fawning and 
smiling like a courtier ; Lord C. presented himself easy, unem- 
barrassed, like a gentleman ! " These are the stories one has 
to recall about the Prince and King — kindness to a housemaid, 
generosity to a groom, criticism on a bow. There are no better 
stories about him : they are mean and trivial, and they charac- 
terize him. The great war of empires and giants goes on. Day 
by day victories are won and lost b}^ the brave. Torn, smok}' 
flags and battered eagles are wrenched from the heroic enemy 
and laid at his feet ; and he sits there on his throne and smiles, 
and gives the guerdon of valor to the conqueror. He ! Elliston 
the actor, when the Coronation was performed, in which he took 
the principal part, used to fancy himself the King, burst into 
tears, and hiccup a blessing on the people. I beHeve it is cer- 
tain about George IV., that he had heard so much of the war, 
knighted so many people, and worn such a prodigious quantity 
of marshal's uniforms, cocked-hats, cock's feathers, scarlet and 
bullion in general, that he actually fancied he had been present 
in some campaigns, and, under the name of General Brock, led 
a tremendous charo^e of the German lecrion at Waterloo. 

He is dead but thirty 3'ears, and one asks how a great society 
could have tolerated him ? Would we bear him now ? In this 
quarter of a centur}^ what a silent revolution has been working ! 
how it has separated us from old times and manners ! How it 
has changed men themselves ! I can see old gentlemen now 
among us, of perfect good breeding, of quiet lives, with vener- 
able graj^ heads, fondling their grandchildren ; and look at them, 
and wonder at what they were once. That gentleman of the 
grand old school, when he was in the 10th Hussars, and dined 
at the Prince's table, would fall under it night after night. 
Night after night, that gentleman sat at Brookes's or Raggett's 
over the dice. If, in the petulance of play or drink, that gen- 
tleman spoke a sharp word to his neighbor, he and the other 
would infallibly go out and try to shoot each other the next 
morning. That gentleman would drive his friend Richmond the 
black boxer down to Moulsey, and hold his coat, and shout and 
swear, and hurrah with delight, whilst the black man was beat- 
ing Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a man!}' 
pleasure in pulling his own coat off, and thrashing a bargeman 
in a street row. That gentleman has been in a watch-house. 
That gentleman, so exquisitel}^ polite with ladies in a drawing- 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 81 

room, so loftily courteous, if he talked now as he used among 
men in his 3'oath, would swear so as to make 3- our hair stand 
on end. I met lateh^ a very old German gentleman, who had 
served in our army at the beginning of the centur}^ Since 
then he has lived on his own estate, but rarely meeting with an 
Englishman, whose language — the language of fifty years ago 
that is — he possesses perfectly. When this highly bred old 
man began to speak English to me, almost every other word he 
uttered was an oath : as the}^ used (they swore dreadfull}^ in 
Flanders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, or at 
Carlton House over the supper and cards. Read B3'ron's let- 
ters. So accustomed is the 3'oung man to oaths that he emplo3's 
them even in writing to his friends, and swears b3^ the post. 
Read his account of the doings of 3'oung men at Cambridge, of 
the ribald professors, one of whom " could pour out Greek like 
a drunken Helot," and whose excesses surpassed even those of 
the 3'oung men. Read Matthews's description of the bo34sh lord- 
ling's housekeeping at Newstead, the skull-cup passed round, 
the monk's dresses from the masquerade warehouse, in which the 
3^oung scapegraces used to sit until daylight, chanting appro- 
priate songs round their wine. " We come to breakfast at two 
or three o'clock," Matthews says. '' There are gloves and foils 
for those who like to amuse themselves, or we fire pistols at a 
mark in the hall, or we worr3' the wolf." A J0II3" life truly ! 
The noble 3'Oung owner of the mansion writes about such affairs 
himself in letters to his friend, Mr. John Jackson, pugilist, in 
London. 

All the Prince's time tells a similar strange stor3' of manners 
and pleasure. In Wraxall we find the Prime Minister himself, 
the redoubted William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with per- 
sonages of no less importance than Lord Thurlow the Lord 
Chancellor, and Mr. Dundas the Treasurer of the Nav3''. 
Wraxall relates how these three statesmen, returning after 
dinner from Addiscombe, found a turnpike open and galloped 
through it without paying the toll. The turnpikeman, fanc3ing 
they were highwaymen, fired a blunderbuss after them, but 
missed them ; and the poet sang, — 

" How as Pitt wandered darkling o'er the plain, 
His reason drown'd in Jenkinson's champagne, 
A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, 
Had shed a premier's for a robber's blood." 

Here we have the Treasurer of the Navy, the Lord High Chan- 
cellor, and the Prime Minister, all engaged in a most undoubted 

6 



82 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

lark. In Eldon's "Memoirs," about the very same time, I 
read that the bar loved wine, as well as the woolsack. Not 
John Scott himself ; he was a good boy alwa3's ; and though 
he loved port-wine, loved his business and his duty and his fees 
a great deal better. 

He has a Northern Circuit story of those daj's, about a party 
at the house of a certain Law3^er Fawcett, who gave a dinner 
ever}^ year to the counsel. 

" On one occasion," related Lord Eldon, " I heard Lee say, 
' I cannot leave Fawcett's wine. Mind, Davenport, you will 
go home immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that 
cause that we have to conduct to-morrow.' 

" ' Not I,' said Davenport. ' Leave ray dinner and my wine 
to read a brief! No, no, Lee ; that won't do.' 

"'Then,' said Lee, 'what is to be done? who else is em- 
ployed?' 

" Davenport. — ' Oh ! young Scott.' 

" Lee. — ' Oh ! he must go. Mr. Scott, j'ou must go home 
immediatel}', and make 3'ourself acquainted with that cause, 
before our consultation this evening.' 

" This was very hard upon me ; but I did go, and there was 
an attorney from Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, 
and I do not know how many other persons. Pretty late, in 
came Jack Lee, as drunk as he could be. 

"'I cannot consult to-night; I must go to bed,' he ex- 
claimed, and away he went. Then came Sii* Thomas Daven- 
port. 

"'We cannot have a consultation to-night, Mr. Words- 
worth ' (Wordsworth, I think, was the name ; it was a Cum- 
berland name), shouted Davenport. 'Don't a'Ou see how 
drunk Mr. Scott is? it is impossible to consult.' Poor me! 
who had scarce had any dinner, and lost all m}^ wine — I was 
so drunk that I coukl not consult ! Well, a verdict was given 
against us, and it was all owing to Law^'er Fawcett's dinner. 
We moved for a new trial ; and I must sa}^, for the honor of 
the bar, that those two gentlemen. Jack Lee and Sir Thomas 
Davenport, paid all the expenses between them of the first trial. 
It is the onl}^ instance I ever knew ; but the}^ did. We moved 
for a new trial (on the ground, I suppose, of the counsel not 
being in their senses), and it was granted. When it came on, 
the following .year, the judge rose and said, — 

" 'Gentlemen, did any of 3^ou dine with Lawyer Fawcett 
yesterday? for, if you did, I will not hear this cause till next 
year.' 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 83 

*' There was gi-eat laughter. "We gained the cause that 
time." 

On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzj^ must 
needs be going the Nortliern Circuit, " we found him," sa^'S 
Mr. Scott, "lying upon the pavement inebriated. We sub- 
scribed a guinea at supper for him, and a half-crown for his 
elerk — (no doubt there was a large bar, so that Scott's joke 
did not cost him much), — "and sent him, when he waked 
next morning, a brief, with instructions to move for what we 
denominated the writ of quare adhcesit pavimento ? with observa- 
tions duly calculated to induce him to think that it required 
great learning to explain the necessity of granting it, to the 
judge before whom he was to move." Boswell sent all round 
the town to attorneys for books that might enable him to dis- 
tinguish himself — but in vain. He moved, however, for the 
writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the 
brief. The judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience 
amazed. The judge said, "I never heard of such a writ — 
what can it be that adheres pavimento ? Are any of you gentle- 
men at the bar able to explain this ? " 

The bar laughed. At last one of them said, — 

" My lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhcesit pavimento. There 
was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried 
to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the 
pavement." 

The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the 
Bishop of Lincoln was moving from the deanery of St. Paul's, 
he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Ha3% 
how he should move some especially' fine claret, about which he 
was anxious. 

"Pray, my lord bishop," says Hay, "how much of the 
wine have you ? " 

The bishop said six dozen. 

" If that is all," Hay answered, " you have but to ask me 
six times to dinner, and I will carry it all away myself." 

There were giants in those days ; but this joke about wine 
is not so fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Thelwall, in the 
heat of the French Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing 
pot of porter. He blew the head off, and said, "This is the 
wa}'- 1 would serve all kings." 

Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings 
recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney's 
"Memoirs." She represents a prince of the blood in quite a 
royal condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, 



84 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

creaking boots and rattling oaths of the 3'oiing princes, appear 
to have frightened the prim household of Windsor, and set all 
the teacups twittering on the tray. On the night of a ball and 
birthda3', when one of the prett}', kind princesses was to come 
out, it was agreed that her brother, Prince William Henr}-, 
should dance the opening minuet with her, and he came to visit 
the household at their dinner. ^ 

*' At dinner, Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnifl- 
centl}^ ; Miss Goldsworth}', Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc 
and Stanhope, dined with us ; and while we were still eating 
fruit, the Duke of Clarence entered. 

" He was just risen from the King's table, and waiting for 
his equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you 
an idea of the energy of his Royal Highness's language, I ought 
to set apart an objection to writing, or rather intimating, cer- 
tain forcible words, and beg leave to show you in genuine colors 
a roval sailor. 

"We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two gen- 
tlemen placed themselves behind their chairs, while the footmen 
left the room. But he ordered us all to sit down, and called 
the men back to hand about some wine. He was in exceeding 
high spirits, and in the utmost good humor. He placed him- 
self at the head of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and 
looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport and mischief; 
yet clever withal, as well as comical. 

" ' Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the King 
at St. James's on his birthday. Praj^, have you all drunk his 
Majesty's health ? ' 

" 'No, your Ro3'al Highness; 3-our Roj'al Highness might 
make dem do dat,' said Mrs. Schwellenberg. 

"'Oh, by , Twill! Here, 3'ou ' (to the footman), 

' bring champagne ; I'll drink the King's health again, if I die 
for it. Yes, I have done it pretty well alread}^ ; so has the 
King, I promise 3'ou ! I believe his Majest3' was never taken 
such good care of before ; we have kept his spirits up, I 
promise you ; we have enabled him to go through his fatigues ; 
and I should have done more still, but for the ball and Mar3' ; 
— I have promised to dance with Mar3'. I must keep sober 
for Mary.' " 

Indefatigable Miss Burne3' continues for a dozen pages re^ 
porting H.R.H.'s conversation, and indicating, with a humor- 
not unworth3^ of the clever little author of " Evelina," the in^ 
creasing state of excitement of the 3'oung sailor Prince, who 
drank more and more champagne, stopped old Mrs. Schwellen- 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 85 

berg's remonstrances by giving the old lad}' a kiss, and telling 
her to hold her potato-trap, and who did not "keep sober for 
Mary." Mary had to find another partner that night, for the 
royal William Henry could not keep his legs. 

Will you have a picture of the amusements of another royal 
prince? It is the Duke of York, the blundering general, the 
beloved commander-in-chief of the army, the brother with 
whom George IV. had had many a midnight carouse, and who 
continued his habits of pleasure almost "till death seized his 
stout body. 

In Puckler Muskau's "Letters," that German Prince de- 
scribes a bout with H.R.H., who in his best time was such a 
powerful toper that " six bottles of claret after dinner scarce 
made a perceptible change in his countenance." 

" I remember," says Plickler, " that one evening, — indeed, 
it was past midnight, — he took some of his guests, among 
whom were the Austrian ambassador, Count Meervelt, Count 
Beroldingen, and myself, into his beautiful armory. We tried 
to swing several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very 
firm grasp ; whence it happened that tlie^ Duke and Meervelt 
both scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword 
so as to draw blood. Meervelt then wished to try if the sword 
cut as well as a Damascus, and attempted to cut through one 
of the wax candles that stood on the table. The expe'i^ment 
answered so ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, 
fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we were 
groping in the dark and trying to find the door, the Duke's 
aide-de-camp stammered out in great agitation, ' By G— , 
sir, I remember the sword is poisoned ! ' 

"You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded 
at this intelligence ! Happily, on further examination, it ap- 
peared that claret, and not poison, was at the bottom of the 
colonel's exclamation." 

And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in 
which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of 
the realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast 
took place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to 
me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gilray's 
caricatures, and amongst Fox's jolly associates, there figures a 
great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Nor- 
folk in his time, and celebrated for his table exploits.*^ He had 
quarrelled with the Prince, like the rest of the Whigs ; but a 
sort of reconciliation had taken place ; and now, being a very 
old man, the Prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pa- 



86 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

vilion, and the old Duke drove over from his Castle of Arundel 
with his famous equipage of gra}' horses, still remembered in 
Sussex. 

The Prince of Wales had concocted with his ro3-al brothers 
a notable scheme for making the okl man drunk. Ever}^ per- 
son at table was enjoined to drink wine with the Duke — a 
challenge which the old toper did not refuse. He soon began 
to see that there was a conspiracy against him ; he drank glass 
for glass ; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the First 
Gentleman of Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of 
the royal brothers filled a great glass for the Duke. He stood 
up and tossed off the drink. " Now," says he, *' I will have 
my carriage, and go home." The Prince urged upon him his 
previous promise to sleep under the roof where he had been so 
generously entertained. "No," he said; he had had enough 
of such hospitality. A trap had been set for him ; he would 
leave the place at once and never enter its doors more. 

The carriage was called, and came ; but in the half-hour's 
interval, the liquor had proved too potent for the old man ; his 
host's generous purpose was answered, and the Duke's old gray 
head lay stupefied on the table. Nevertheless, when his post- 
chaise was announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, 
and stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel. They 
drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn ; 
the poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke 
that mornins: he was in bed at the Prince's hideous house at 
Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence : the}' 
have fiddlers there every day ; and sometimes buffoons and 
mountebanks hire the Riding House and do their tricks and 
tumbling there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks 
round which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can fancy the 
flushed faces of the royal princes as they support themselves 
at the portico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk's disgrace ; 
but I can't fanc}' how the man who perpetrated it continued to 
be called a gentleman. 

From drinking, the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of 
which in his youth our Prince was a great practitioner. He 
was a famous pigeon for the pla3'-men ; the}^ lived upon him. 
Egalite Orleans, it was believed, punished him severely. A no- 
ble lord, whom we shall call the Marquis of Ste3'ne, is said to 
have mulcted him in immense sums. He frequented the clubs, 
where play was then almost universal ; and, as it was known 
his debts of honor were sacred, whilst he was gambling Jews 
waited outside to purchase his notes of hand. His transactions 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 87 

on the turf were unlucky as well as discreditable : though I 
believe he and his jockey, and his horse, Escape, were all inno- 
cent in that affair which created so much scandal. 

Arthur's, iVlmack's, Bootle's, and White's were the chief 
clubs of the 3'oung men of fashion. There was pla}' at all, 
and decaj'ed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the 
unwar}^ there. In Selwyn's "Letters" we find Carlisle, Dev- 
onshire, Coventry, Queensberr}^ all undergoing the probation. 
Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late 
times — lost 200,000/. at play. Gibbon tells of his playing for 
twenty-two hours at a sitting, and losing 500/. an hour. That 
indomitable punter said that the greatest pleasure in life, after 
winning, was losing. What hours, what nights, what health 
did he waste over the devil's books ! I was going to say what 
peace of mind ; but he took his losses very philosopliically. 
After an awful night's pla}', and the enjoyment of the greatest 
pleasure but one in life, he was found on a sofa tranquilly read- 
ing; an Ecloofue of Viro^il. 

Pla}^ survived long after the wild Prince and Fox had given 
up the dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brum- 
mell — how many names could I mention of men of the world 
who have suffered by it! In 1837 occurred a famous trial 
which prett}^ nigh put an end to gambling in England. A peer 
of the realm was found cheating at whist, and repeatedly seen 
to practise the trick called sauter la coupe. His friends at the 
clubs saw him cheat, and went on playing with him. One 
greenhorn, who had discovered his foul play, asked an old hand 
what he should do. " Do," said the Mammon of Unrighteous- 
ness, " Back him^ you fool.'' The best efforts were made to 
screen him. People wrote him anonj^mous letters and warned 
him ; but he would cheat, and they were obliged to find him 
out. Since that day, when my lord's shame was made public, 
the gaming-table has lost all its splendor. Shabby Jews and 
blacklegs prowl about racecourses and tavern parlors, and now 
and then inveigle silly j'okels with greasy packs of cards in 
railroad cars ; but Play is a deposed goddess, her worshippers 
bankrupt and her table in rags. 

So is another famous British institution gone to decay — the 
Ring : the noble practice of British boxing, which in my youth 
was still almost flourishing. 

The Prince, in his earb/ days, was a great patron of this 
national sport, as his grand-uncle CuUoden Cumberland had 
been before him ; but, being present at a fight at Brighton, 
where one of the combatants was killed, the Prince pensioned 



88 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

the boxer's widow, and declared he never would attend another 
battle. "But, nevertheless," — I read in the noble language 
of Pierce Egan (whose smaller work on Pugilism I have the 
honor to possess), — ''he thought it a manh^ and decided 
English feature, which ought not to be destro3ed. His Maj- 
esty had a drawing of the sporting characters in the Fives' 
Court placed in his boudoir, to remind him of his former attach- 
ment and support of true courage ; and when anj' fight of note 
occurred after he was king, accounts of it were read to him by 
his desire." That gives one a fine image of a king taking his 
recreation ; — at ease in a ro3'al dressing-gown ; — too majes- 
tic to read himself, ordering the prime minister to read him 
accounts of battles : how Cribb punched Molj'neux's e3'e, or 
Jack Randall thrashed the Game Chicken. 

Where my Prince did actually distinguish himself was in 
driving. He drove once in four hours and a half from Brigh- 
ton to Carlton House — fift^^-six miles. All the 3'oung men of 
that da3^ were fond of that sport. But the fashion of rapid 
driving deserted England ; and, I believe, trotted over to Amer- 
ica. Where are the amusements of our 3'outh? I hear of ro 
gambling now but amongst obscure ruflfians ; of no boxing bu* 
amongst the lowest rabble. One solitar3^ four-in-hand still 
drove round the parks in London last 3'ear ; but that charioteer 
must soon disappear. He was ver3' old ; he was attired after 
the fashion of the 3^ear 1825. He must drive to the banks of 
Stvx ere Ions;, — where the ferrv-boat waits to carrv him over 
to the defunct revellers who boxed and gambled and drank 
and drove with King George. 

The bravery of the Brunswicks, that all the family must 
have it, that George possessed it, are points which all English 
writers have agreed to admit; and 3'et I cannot see how 
George IV. should have been endowed with this quality. 
Swaddled in feather-beds all his life, lazy, obese, perpetually 
eating and drinking, his education was quite unlike that of his 
tough old progenitors. His grandsires had confronted hard- 
ship and war, had ridden up and fired their pistols undaunted 
into 4he face of death. His father had conquered luxury and 
overcome indolence. Here was one who never resisted any 
temptation ; never had a desire but he coddled and pampered 
it ; if ever he had any nerve, frittered it awa3' among cooks, and 
tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera-dancers. 
What muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life — a life that 
was never strung up to any action — an endless Capua with- 
out an3' campaign — all fiddling, and flowers, and feasting, and 






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GEOllGE THE FOURTH. 89 

flattery, and foil}'? When George III. was pressed b}- the 
Catholic question and the India Bill, he said he would retire to 
Hanover rather than jield upon either point ; and he would 
have done what he said. But, before yielding, he was deter- 
mined to fight his Ministers and Parliament ; and he did, and 
he beat them. The time came when George IV. was pressed 
too upon the Catholic claims ; the cautious Peel had slipped 
over to that side ; the grim old Wellington had joined it ; and 
Peel tells us in his '' Memoirs," what was the conduct of the 
king. He at first refused to submit ; whereupon Peel and the 
Duke offered their resignations, which their gracious master 
accepted. He did these two gentlemen the honor, Peel says, 
to kiss them both when the}^ went away. (Fancy old Arthur's 
grim countenance and eagle beak as the monarch kisses it!) 
When they were gone he sent after them, surrendered, and 
wrote to them a letter begging them to remain in oflfice, and 
allowing them to have their wa}^ Then his Majesty had a 
meeting with Eldon, which is related at curious length in the 
latter's "Memoirs." He told F^ldon what was not true about 
his interview with the new Catholic converts ; utterly misled 
the old ex-Chancellor ; cried, whimpered, fell on his neck, and 
kissed him too. We know old Eldon's own tears were pumped 
ver}^ freely. Did these two fountains gush together? I can't 
fancy a behavior more unmanly, imbecile, pitiable. This a 
defender of the faith ! This a chief in the crisis of a great na- 
tion ! This an inheritor of the couras-e of the Georoes ! 

Many of my hearers no doubt have journeyed to the pretty 
old town of Brunswick, in company with that most worthy, 
prudent, and polite gentleman, the Earl of Malmesburj^ and 
fetched away Princess Caroline for her longing husband, the 
Prince of Wales. Old Queen Charlotte would have had her 
eldest son marry a niece of her own, that famous Louisa of 
Strelitz, afterwards Queen of Prussia, and who shares with 
Marie Antoinette in the last age the sad pre-eminence of beauty 
and misfortune. But George III. had a niece at Brunswick ; 
she was a richer princess than her Serene Highness of Strelitz : 
— m fine, the Princess Caroline was selected to marry the heir 
to the English throne. We follow m}^ Lord Malmesbury in 
quest of her ; we are introduced to her illustrious father and 
royal mother ; we witness the balls and fetes of the old court ; 
we are presented to the Princess herself, with her fair hair, her 
blue e3'es, and her impertinent shoulders —j- a livelj', bouncing, 
romping Princess, who takes the advice of her courtlj' English 
mentor most generously and kindly. We can be present at her 



90 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

very toilette, if we like ; regarding whicli, and for very good 
reasons, ttie British courtier implores her to be particular. 
What a strange court ! What a queer privacy of morals and 
manners do we look into ! Shall we regard it as preachers and 
moralists, and cry Woe, against the open vice and selfishness and 
coiTuption ; or look at it as we do at the king in the pantomime, 
with his pantomime wife and pantomime courtiers, whose big 
heads he knocks together, whom he pokes with his pantomime 
sceptre, whom he orders to prison under the guard of his pan- 
tomime beef-eaters, as he sits down to dine on his pantomime 
pudding ? It is grave ; it is sad ; it is theme most curious for 
moral and political speculation ; it is monstrous, grotesque, 
laughable, with its prodigious littlenesses, etiquettes, ceremo- 
nials, sham moralities ; it is as serious as a sermon, and as 
absurd and outrageous as Punch's puppet-show. 

Malmesbur}^ tells us of the private life of the Duke, Prin- 
cess Caroline's father, who was to die, like his warlike son, in 
arms against the French ; presents us to his courtiers, his fa- 
vorite ; his Duchess, George III.'s sister, a grim old Princess, 
who took the British envoy aside, and told him wicked old sto- 
ries of wicked old dead people and times ; who came to England 
afterwards when her nephew was regent, and lived in a shabb}'' 
furnished lodging, old and dingy, and deserted, and grotesque, 
but somehow rojal. And we go with him to the Duke to de- 
mand the Princess's hand in form, and we hear the Brunswick 
guns fire their adieux of salute, as H.R.H. the Princess of 
Wales departs in the frost and snow ; and we visit the domains 
of the Prince Bishop of Osnaburg — the Duke of York of our 
earl}^ time ; and we dodge about from the French revolutionists, 
whose ragged legions are pouring over Holland and German}', 
and gayly trampling down the old world to the tune of fa ira ; 
and we take shipping at Slade, and we land at Greenwich, 
where the Princess's ladies and the Prince's ladies are in wait- 
ing to receive her Royal Highness. 

What a history follows ! Arrived in London, the bride- 
groom hastened eagerl}^ to receive his bride. When she was 
first presented to him, Lord Malmesbur}' says she very properly 
attempted to kneel. He raised her gracefully enough, em- 
braced her, and turning round to me, said, — 

" Harris, I am not well ; pray get me a glass of brandy." 
I said, " Sir, had you not better have a glass of water? " 
Upon which, much out of humor, he said, with an oath, 
*' No ; I will go to the Queen." 

What could be expected from a wedding which bad such a 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 91 

beo'inning — from such a bridegroom and such a bride ? I am 
not going to carry you through the scandal of that story, or 
follow th'e poor princess through all her vagaries ; her balls 
and her dances, her travels to Jerusalem and Naples, her jigs, 
and her junketings, and her tears. As I read her trial in his- 
tory, I vote she is not guilty. I don't say it is an impartial 
verdict ; but as one reads her story the heart bleeds for the 
kindly, generous, outraged creature. If wrong there be, let it 
lie at his door w^io wickedly thrust her from it. Spite of her 
foUies, the great hearty people of England loved, and protected, 
and pitied her. " God bless you ! we will bring your husband 
back to you," said a mechanic one day, as she told Lady Char- 
lotte Bury with tears streaming down her cheeks. They could 
not bring that husband back ; they could not cleanse that selfish 
heart. Was hers the only one he had wounded? Steeped in 
selfishness, impotent for faithful attachment and manly enduring 
love, — had it not survived remorse, was it not accustomed to 

desertion ? 

Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story ; 
— how the Prince reeled into chapel to be married ; how he 
hiccupped out his vows of fidelity — you know how he kept 
them ; how he pursued the woman wiiom he had married ; to 
what a state he brought her ; with what blows he struck her ; 
with what malignity he pursued her ; wiiat his treatment of his 
daughter was ; and what his own life. He the first gentleman 
of Europe ! There is no stronger satire on the proud English 
society of that day, than that they admired George. 

No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen ; and whilst 
our eyes turn away, shocked, from this monstrous image of 
pride, vanity, weakness, they may see in that England over 
which the last George pretended to reign, some who merit 
indeed the title of gentlemen, some who make our hearts beat 
when we hear their names, and whose memory we fondly salute 
when that of yonder imperial manikin is tumbled into oblivion. 
I will take men of my own profession of letters. I will take 
Walter Scott? who loved the King, and who was his sword and 
buckler, and championed him like that brave Highlander ui his 
own story, who fights round his craven chief. What a good 
gentleman! What a friendly soul, what a generous hand, 
what an amiable hfe was that of the noble Sir Walter ! I will 
take another man of letters, whose Ufe I admire even more,— 
an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years ot 
labor, day by day storing up learning, day by day working 
for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely 



92 THE FOUR GEORGP:S. 

faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn 
from his path for popular praise or princes' favor ; — I mean 
Robert jSouthey. We have left his old political landmarks miles 
and miles behind ; we protest against his dogmatism ; naj, we 
begin to forget it and his politics : but I hope his life will not 
be forgotten, for it is sublime in its simplicit}^ its energy, 
its honor, its affection. In the combat between Time and 
Thalaba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered. Ke- 
hama's curse frightens \Qvy few readers now ; but Southey's 
private letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last 
among us, as long as kind hearts like to sympathize with good- 
ness and purity, and love and upright life. " If 3'our feelings 
are like mine," he writes to his wife, " I will not go to Lisbon 
without you, or I will stay at home, and not part from you. 
For though not unhapp}' when away, still without you I am 
not happy. For 3'our sake as well as my own and little 
Edith's, I will not consent to any separation ; the growth 
of a year's love between her and me, if it please God she 
should live, is a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable 
in its consequences, to be given up for an}' light inconvenience 
on your part or mine. ... On these things we will talk at 
leisure; only, dear, dear Edith, ive must not part! ^' 

This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman 
in Europe had a wife and daughter too. Did he love them so? 
Was he faithful to them? Did he sacrifice ease for them, or 
show them the sacred examples of religion and honor? Heaven 
gave the Great English Prodigal no such good fortune. Peel 
proposed to make a baronet of Southe}- ; and to this advance- 
ment the King agreed. The poet nobl}' rejected the offered 
promotion. 

'^I have," he wrote, "a pension of 200/. a year, conferred 
upon me by the good offices of my old friend C. Wynn, and I 
have the laureateship. The salary of the latter was immediately 
appropriated, as far as it went, to a life insurance for 3,000/., 
which, with an earlier insurance, is the sole provision I have 
made for my family. All beyond must be derived from my 
own industrv. Writins: for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that 
I have gained ; for, having also something better in view, and 
never, tlierefore, having courted popularity, nor written for the 
mere sake of gain, it has not been possible for me to la};^ hy any- 
thing. Last 3"ear, for the first time in my life, I was provided 
with a year's expenditure beforehand. This exposition may 
show how unbecoming and unwise it would be to accept the 




NAVAL BATTLE. 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 93 

rank which, so greatly to ni}' honor, you have solicited for 



me." 



How noble his poverty is, compared to the wealth of his 
master ! His acceptance even of a pension was made the object 
of his opponents' satire : but think of the merit and modesty 
of this State pensioner ; and that other enormous drawer of 
public mone}', who receives 100,000/. a year, and comes to 
Parliament with a request for 650,000/. more ! 

Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Colling- 
wood ; and I think, since heaven made gentlemen, there is 
no record of a better one than that. Of brighter -deeds, I 
grant you, we may read performed b}' others ; but where of 
a nobler, kinder, more beautiful life of dut}', of a gentler, truer 
heart? Beyond dazzle of success and blaze of genius, I fancy 
shining a hundred and a hundred times higher, the sublime 
purity of Collingwood's gentle glor}'. His heroism stirs British 
hearts when we recall it. His love, and goodness, and piety 
make one thrill with happ}" emotion. As one reads of him 
and his great comrade going into the victory with which their 
names are immortally connected, how the old English word 
comes up, and that old English feeling of what I should like to 
call Christian hone ' What gentlemen they were, what great 
hearts they had 1 " We can, my dear Coll," writes Nelson to 
him, '' have no little jealousies ; we have only one great object 
in view, — that of meeting the enem}', and getting a glorious 
peace for our countr}'." At Trafalgar, when the " Royal Sov- 
ereign" was pressing alone into the midst of the combined 
fleets. Lord Nelson said to Captain Blackwood: "See how 
that noble fellow, CoUingwood, takes his ship into action ! 
How I envy him ! " The very same throb and impulse of 
heroic generosit}^ was beating in Collingwood's honest bosom. 
As he led into the fight, he said : ' ' What would Nelson give 
to be here ! " 

After the action of the 1st of June, he writes: — "We 
cruised for a few days, like disappointed people looking for 
what they could not find, until the morning of little Sarah's 
birthday^ between eight and nine o'clock, when the French 
fleet, of twentv-five sail of the line, was discovered to wind- 
ward. We chased them, and they bore down within about 
five miles of us. The night was spent in watching and prepa- 
ration for the succeeding day ; and many a blessing did I send 
forth to my Sarah, lest I should never bless her more. At 
dawn, we made our approach on the enemy, then drew up, 
dressed our ranks, and it was about eight when the admiral 



94 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

made the signal for each ship to engage her opponent, and 
brino- her to close action ; and then down we went under a 
crowd of sail, and in a manner that would have animated the 
coldest heart, and struck terror into the most intrepid enemy. 
The ship we were to engage was two ahead of the French 
admiral, so we had to go through his fire and that of two ships 
next to him, and received all their broadsides two or three 
times before we fired a gun. It was then near ten o'clock. 
I observed to the admiral, that about that time our wives were 
going to church, but that I thought the peal we should ring 
about the Frenchman's ear would outdo their parish bells." 

There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading 
the simple phrases of such a hero. Here is victor}' and cour- 
age, but love sublimer and superior. Here is a Christian 
soldier spending the night before battle in watching and pre- 
paring for the succeeding da}^ thinking of his dearest home, 
and sending man}^ blessings forth to his Sarah, '' lest he should 
never bless her more." Who would not sa}- Amen to his 
supplications ? It was a benediction to his countr}' — the 
prayer of that intrepid loving heart. 

We have spoken of a good soldier and good men of letters 
as specimens of English gentlemen of the age just past : may 
we not also — mau}^ of my elder hearers, I am sure, have 
read, and fondh' remember his delightful story — speak of a 
good divine, and mention Reginald Heber as one of the best 
of English gentlemen? The charming poet, the happy pos- 
sessor of all sorts of gifts and accomplishments, birth, wit, 
fame, high character, competence — he was the beloved parish 
priest in his own home of Hoderel, "counselling his people 
in their troubles, advising them in their difficulties, comforting 
them in distress, kneeling often at their sick-l>eds at the haz- 
ard of his own life ; exhorting, encouraging where there was 
need ; where there was strife the peace-maker ; where there 
was want the free giver." 

When the Indian bishopric was offered to him he refused at 
first; but after communing with himself (and committing his 
case to the quarter whither such pious men are wont to carry 
their doubts), he withdrew his refusal, and prepared himself for 
his mission and to leave his beloved parish. " Little children, 
love one another, and forgive one another," were the last sacred 
words he said to his weeping people. He parted with them, 
knowing, perhaps, he should see them no more. Like those 
other good men of whom we haA^e just spoken, love and duty 
were his life's aim. Happy he, happy they who were so 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 95 

gloriously faithful to both ! He writes to his wife those charm- 
ing lines on his journe}^ : — 

" If thou, my love, wert by my side, my babies at my knee, 
How gladly would our pinnace glide o'er Gunga's mimic sea! 

" I miss thee at the dawning gray, when, on our deck reclined. 
In careless ease ray limbs I lay and woo the cooler wind. 

" I miss thee when by Gunga's stream my twilight steps I guide ; 
But most beneath the lamp's pale beam I miss thee by my side. 

" I spread my books, my pencil try, the lingering noon to cheer ; 
But miss thy kind approving eye, thy meek attentive ear. 

" But when of morn and eve the star beholds me on my knee, 
I feel, though thou art distant far, thy prayers ascend for me. 

" Then on ! then on ! where duty leads my course be onward still, — 
O'er broad Hindostan's sultry meads, o'er bleak Almorah's lull. 

" That course nor Delhi's kingly gates, nor wild Malwah detain. 
For sweet the bliss us both awaits by yonder western main. 

"Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, across the dark blue sea: 
But ne'er were hearts so blithe and gay as there shall meet in thee ! " 

Is it not Collingwood and Sarah, and Southey and Edith? 
His affection is part of his life. What were life without it? 
Without love, I can fancy no gentleman. 

How touching is a remark Heber makes in his "Travels 
through India," that on inquiring of the natives at a town, 
which of the governors of India stood highest in the opinion of 
the people, he found that, though Lord Wellesley and Warren 
Hastings were honored as the two greatest men who had ever 
ruled this part of the world, the people spoke with chief affec- 
tion of Judge Cleaveland, who had died, aged twent3'-nine, in 
1784. The people have built a monument over him, and still 
hold a religious feast in his memory. So does his own country 
still tend with a heart's regard the memory of the gentle Heber. 

And Cleaveland died in 1784, and is still loved by the 
heathen, is he? Wh3% that 3'ear 1784 was remarkable in the 
life of our friend the First Gentleman of Europe. Do 3'ou not 
know that he was twenty-one in that year, and opened Carlton 
House with a grand ball to the nobility and gentr}^ and doubt- 
less wore that lovel}' pink coat which we have described. I 
was eager to read about the ball, and looked to the old 
magazines for information. The entertainment took place on 
the 10th F^ebruar3^ In the Earopean Magazi7ie of March, 1784, 
I came straightway upon it : — 



96 THE FOUR GEORGES. 

"The alterations at Carlton House being finished, we lay 
before our readers a description of tlie state apartments as the}' 
appeared on the 10th instant, when H.R.H. gave a grand ball 

to the principal nobility and gentrj' The entrance to 

the state room fills the mind with an inexpressible idea of 
greatness and splendor. 

" The state chair is of a gold frame, covered with crimson 
damask ; on each corner of the feet is a lion's head, expressive 
of fortitude and strength ; the feet of the chair have serpents 
twining round them, to denote wisdom. Facing the throne, 
appears the helmet of Minerva ; and over the windows, glory 
is represented by Saint George with a superb gloria. 

"But the saloon ma}^ be styled the chef d'ceuvre^ and in 
every ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a 
figured lemon satin. The window-curtains, sofas, and chairs 
are of the same color. The ceiling is ornamented with em- 
blematical paintings, representing the Graces and Muses, 
together with Jupiter, Mercur}', Apollo, and Paris. Two ormolu 
chandeliers are placed here. It is impossible by expression to 
do juytice to the extraordinary workmanship, as well as design, 
of the ornaments. They each consist of a palm, branching out 
in five directions for the reception of lights. A beautiful figure 
of a rural nj^mph is represented entwining the stems of the tree 
with wreaths of flowers. In the centre of the room is a rich 
chandelier. To see this apartment dans son plus beau jour^ it 
should be viewed in the glass over the chimney-piece. The 
range of apartments from the saloon to the ball-room, when the 
doors are open, formed one of the grandest spectacles that ever 
was beheld." 

In the Gentleman! s Magazine^ for the same month and year 
— March, 1784 — is an account of another festival, in which 
another great gentleman of English extraction is represented as 
takijig a principal share : — 

"According to order, H.E., the Commander-in-Chief was 
admitted to a public audience of Congress ; and, being seated, 
the President, after a pause, informed him that the United 
States assembled were ready to receive his communications. 
Whereupon he arose, and spoke as follows : — 

" 'Mr. President, — The great events on which m}?^ resigna- 
tion depended having at length taken place, I present m3'self 
before Congress to surrender into their hands the ti'ust com- 
mitted to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the 
service of my country-. 

" ' Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sov- 



GEORGE THE FOURTH. 97 

ereignt3% I resign the appointment I accepted with diffidence ; 
which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude 
of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the nation, 
and the patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of my 
official life, by commending the interests of our dearest coun- 
try to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the 
superintendence of them to His hoi}* keeping. Having finished 
the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action ; 
and, bidding an affectionate farewell to this august bod}^ under 
whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission 
and take my leave of the employments of mj' public life.' To 
w^hich the President replied : — 

" ' Sir, having defended the standai'd of liberty in the New 
World, ha\'ing taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and 
those who feel oppi'ossion, you retire with the blessings of 3'our 
fellow-citizens ; though the glory of your virtues will not termi- 
nate with your militar}' command, but will descend to remotest 
ages.' " 

Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed ; — 
the opening feast of Prince George in London, or the resigna- 
tion of Washington? Which is the noble character for after 
ages to admire ; — 3'on fribble dancing in lace and spangles, or 
yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a life of spotless 
honor, a purit}" unrepi\)ached, a courage indomitable, and a 
consummate victor}' ? AYhich of these is the true gentleman ? 
What is it to be a gentleman ? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead 
a pure life, to keep your honor virgin ; to have the esteem of 
3'our fellow-citizens, and the love of your fireside ; to bear good 
fortune meekly ; to suffer evil with constancy' ; and through 
evil or good to maintain truth always? Show me the happy 
man whose life exhibits these qualities, and him we will salute 
as gentleman, whatever his rank ma}' be ; show me the prince 
who possesses them, and he ma}^ be sure of our love and 
lo3'alty. The heart of Britain still beats kindly for George 
III., — not because he was wise and just, but because he was 
pure in life, honest in intent, and because according to his 
lights he worshipped hea^'en. I think we acknowledge in the 
inheritrix of his sceptre, a wiser rule, and a life as honorable 
and pure ; and I am sure the future painter of our manners will 
pay a willing allegiance to that good life, and be loyal to the 
memory of that unsullied virtue. 



THE ENGLISH HUIOEISTS 



OF THE 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



SWIFT. 



In treating of the English humorists of the past age, it is of 
the men and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I 
ask permission to speak to you ; and in doing so, you are 
aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merelj' humor- 
ous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known 
to present a ver\^ sober countenance, and was himself, the story 
goes, the melanchol}' patient whom the Doctor advised to go 
and see Harlequin * — a man full of cares and perplexities like 
the rest of us, whose Self must always be serious to hhn, under 
whatever mask or disguise or uniform he presents it to the 
public. And as all of you here must needs be grave when 3'ou 
think of 3'our own past and present, you will not look to find, 
in the histories of those whose lives and feelinirs I am 2oin«: 
to tr}' and describe to 3'ou, a stor}^ that is otherwise than seri- 
ous, and often very sad. If Humor only meant laughter, you 
would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers tlian 
about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who 
possesses in common with these the power of making you 
laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your 
kind presence here shows that you have curiositv and svmpathy, 
appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our 
mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to 
awaken and direct 30ur love, your pit3', 3'our kindness — 3'Our 
scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture — your tenderness for 
the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhapp3'. To the best 
of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinar3' actions 
and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the 
week-da3' preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he fiiKls, 

* The anecdote is frequently told of our performer Kicu. 



102 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem 
him — sometimes love him. And, as his business is to mark 
other people's lives and peculiarities, we moralize upon his life 
when he is gone — and Aesterdax's preacher becomes the text 
for to-day's sermon. 

Of English parents, and of a good English family of clergy- 
men,* Swift was born in Dublin in 1GG7, seven months after 
tlie death of his father, who liad come to practise there as a 
lawyer. The boy went to school at Kihvenny, and afterwards 
to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a degree with diffi- 
cult}', and was wild, and witt^', and poor. In 1G88, by the 
recommendation of his mother. Swift was received into tlie 
family of Sir William Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in 
Ireland. He left his patron in 1694, and the next year took 
orders in Dublin. But he threw up the small Irish preferment 
wliich he got and returned to Temple, in whose family he re- 
mained until Sir William's death in 1G99. His hopes of ad- 
vancement in England failing. Swift returned to Ireland, and 
took the living of Laracor. Hither he invited Hester Johnson, f 
Temple's natural daughter, with whom he had contracted a 
tender friendship, while they were both dependants of Temple's. 
And with an occasional visit to England, Swift now passed 
nine years at home. 

In 1709 he came to England and, with a brief visit to Ire- 
land, during which he took possession of his deanerj' of St. 

* He was from a j-ounger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His 
grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodricli, in Herefordshire, 
suffered for his loyalty in Charles l.'s time. That gentleman married 
Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the family of the poet. Sir AValter Scott 
gives, with his characteristic minuteness in such points, the exact relation- 
sliip between these famous men. Swift was '* the son of Dryden's second 
cousin." Swift, too, was the enemy of Dryden's reputation. "Witness the 
" Battle of tlie Books : " — " The difference was greatest among the horse," 
says he of the moderns, " wliere every private trooper pretended to the 
command, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Withers.'' And in 
" Poetry, a Rhapsody," he advises the poetaster to — 

" Read all the Prefaces of Dr3'^den, 
For these our critics much confide in, 
Though merely writ, at first for filling, 
To raise the volume's price a shilling." 

" Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet," was the phrase of Dryden to his 
kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such matters. 

t " Miss Hetty " she was called in the family — where her face, and 
her dress, and Sir William's treatment of her, all made the real fact about 
her birth plain enough. Sir William left her a thousand pounds. 



SWIFT. 103 

Patrick, he now passed five years in England, taking the most 
distino-uished part in the political transactions which terminated 
with the death of Queen Anne. After her death, his party 
diso-raced, and his hopes of ambition over, Swift returned to 
Dublin, where he remained twelve years. In this time he wrote 
the famous " Drapier's Letters" and "Gulliver's Travels." 
He married Hester Johnson, Stella, and buried Esther Van- 
homrioh, Vanessa, who had followed him to Ireland from Lon- 
don, where she had contracted a violent passion for him. In 
1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, which he quitted for the 
last time on hearing of his wife's illness. Stella died in Jan- 
uary, 1728, and Swift not until 1745, having passed the last 
five of the seventy-eight years of his life with an impaired in- 
tellect and keepers to watch him.* 

You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers ; 
his Hfe has been told by the kindest and most good-natured of 
men, Scott, who admires but can't bring himself to love him ; 
and by stout old Johnson, t who, forced to admit him into the 
company of poets, receives the famous Irishman, and takes off 

* Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about 
the house for many consecutive hours ; sometimes he remained in a kind 
of torpor. At times, he would seem to struggle to bring into distinct con- 
sciousness, and shape into expression, the intellect that lay smothering 
under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier-glass falling by accident, nearly 
fell on him. He said he wished it had ! He once repeated slowly several 
times, " I am what I am." The last thing he wrote was an epigram on the 
building of a magazine for arms and stores, which was pointed out to him 
as he went abroad during his mental disease : — 

" Behold a proof of Irish sense : 
Here Irish wit is seen : 
When nothing's left that's worth defence, 
They build a magazine ! " 

t Besides these famous books of Scott's and Johnson's, there is a copi- 
ous "Life" by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson's "Sherry"), father of 
Richard Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever Irish Dr. Thomas 
Sheridan Swift's intimate, who lost his chaplaincy by so unluckily choo.s- 
ing for a text on the King's birthday, "Sufficient for tlie day is the evil 
thereof ' " Not to mention less important works, there is also the Ke- 
marks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift," by that polite and 
dignified writer, the Earl of Orrery. His lordship is said to have striven 
for literary renown, chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed 
on him by his father, who left his library away from hira. It is to be 
feared that the ink he used to wash out that stain only made it look bigger. 
He had, however, known Swift, and corresponded with people who knew 
him. His work (which appeared in 1751) provoked a good deal of con- 
troversy, calling out, among other brochures, the interesting ' Observation* 
on Lord Orrery '3 Remarks," &c., of Dr. Delany. 



104 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from 
head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the street. 
Dr. Wilde of Dublin,* who has written a most interesting vol- 
ume on the closing 3'ears of Swift's life, calls Johnson "the 
most malignant of his biographers : " it is not easy for an Eng- 
lish critic to please Irishmen — perhaps to try and please them. 
And 3'et Johnson truly admires Swift : Johnson does not quar- 
rel with Swift's change of poHtics, or doubt his sincerity of 
religion : about the famous Stella and Vanessa controversy the 
Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could not 
give the Dean that honest hand of his ; the stout old man puts 
it into his breast, and moves off from him.f 

AVould we have liked to live with him? That is a question 
which in dealing with these people's works, and thinking of 
their lives and peculiarities, every reader of biographies must 
put to himself. Would you have liked to be a friend of the 
great Dean? I should like to have been Shakspeare's shoe- 
black — just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped 
him — to have run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene 
face. I should Uke, as a young man, to have lived on Field- 
ing's staircase in the Temple, and after helping him up to bed 
perhaps, and opening his door with his latch-key, to have 
shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk and 
crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. 
Who would not give something to pass a night at the club with 
Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchin- 
leck? The charm of Addison's companionship and convei'sa- 
tion has passed to us by fond tradition — but Swift? If you 
had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect 
for all persons present, I fear is only very likely) , his equal in 

* Dr. Wilde's book was written on the occasion of the remains of Swift 
and Stella being brought to the light of day — a thing which happened in 
1885, when certain works going on in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, 
afforded an opportunity of their being examined. One hears with surprise 
of these skulls " going the rounds " of houses, and being made the objects 
of dilettante curiosity. The larynx of Swift was actually carried off! 
Phrenologists had a low opinion of his intellect from the observations they 
took. 

Dr. Wilde traces the symptoms of ill health in Swift, as detailed in his 
writings from time to time. He observes, likewise, that the skull gave 
evidence of " diseased action " of the brain during life — such as would be 
produced by an increasing tendency to " cerebral congestion." 

t " He [Dr. Johnson] seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice 
against Swift; for I once took the liberty to ask him if Swift had person- 
ally offended him, and he told me he had not." — Boswell's Tour to TUt 
Hebrides. 



SWIFT. 105 

mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted 
you ; if, undeterred b}- his great reputation, you had met him 
like a man, he would have quailed before you,* and not had 
the pluck to reply, and gone home, and 3'ears after written a 
foul epigram about j^ou — watched for 3'ou in a sewer, and come 
out to assail you with a coward's blqw and a dirt}' bludgeon. 
If you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flattered his 
vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the 
most deUglitful company in the world. He would have been 
so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that 3'ou 
might think he had no object in view but the mdulgence of his 
humor, and that he was the most reckless, simple creature in 
the world. How he would have torn 3'our enemies to pieces 
for you ! and made fun of the Opposition ! His servilit}^ was 
so boisterous that it looked like independence ; f he would have 
done your errands, but with the air of patronizing 3'ou, and 
after fighting your battles, masked, in the street or the press, 
would have kept on his hat before j'our wife and daughters in 



* Few men, to be sure, dared this experiment, but yet their success 
was encouraging. One gentleman made a point of asking the Dean whether 
his uncle Godwin had not given him liis education. Swift, who hated that 
subject cordially, and, indeed, cared little for his kindred, said, sternly, 
" Yes ; he gave me the education of a dog." " Then, sir," cried the other, 
striking his fist on the table, "you have not the gratitude of a dog ! " 

Other occasions there were when a bold face gave the Dean pause, even 
after his Irish almost-royal position was established. But he brought him- 
self into greater danger on a certain occasion, and the amusing circum- 
stances may be once more repeated here. He had unsparingly lashed the 
notable Dublin lawyer, Mr. Serjeant Bettesworth — 

" Thus at the bar, the booby Bettesworth, 
Though lialf a crown o'er-pays his sweat's worth, 
Who knows in law nor text nor margent, 
Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant ! " 

The Serjeant, it is said, swore to have his life. He presented himself at 
the deanery. The Dean asked his name. " Sir, I am Serjeant Bett-es- 
worth." 

" In lohat rerjimmt, prai/? " asked Swift. 

A guard of volunteers formed themselves to defend the Dean at this 
time. 

t " But, my Hamilton, I will never hide the freedom of my sentiments 
from you. I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend 
Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly 
promoted at a distance. His spirit, for I would give it the softest name, 
was ever untractable. The motions of his genius were often irregular. 
He assumed more the air of a patron than of a friend. He affected rather 
to dictate than advise." — Okreky. 



106 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

the drawing-room, content to take that sort of pa}* for his tre- 
mendous services as a bravo.* 

He sa3's as much himself in one of his letters to Boling- 
broke : — " All m}" endeavors to distinguish myself were only 
for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like 
a lord b}^ those who have an opinion of my parts ; whether 
right or wrong is no great matter. And so the reputation of 
wit and great learning does the office of a blue ribbon or a 
coach and six." f 

Could there be a greater candor? It is an outlaw who sa3-s, 
' ' These are m}^ brains ; with these I'll win titles and compete 
with fortune. These are m}' bullets ; these I'll turn into gold ; '* 
and he hears the sound of coaches and six, takes the road like 
Macheath, and makes societ}' stand and deliver. The}' are all 
on their knees before him. Down go m}- lord bishop's apron, 
and his Grace's blue ribbon, and my lad^-'s brocade petticoat 
in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a pat- 
ent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and 
gives them over to followers of his own. The great prize has 
not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, 
which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed on the 

*".... An anecdote, which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkinton, is 
well attested, bears, that the last time he was in London he went to dine 
with the Earl of Burlington, who was but newly married. The Earl, it is 
supposed, being willing to have a little diversion, did not introduce him to 
his lady nor mention his name. After dinner said the Dean, * Lady Bur- 
lington, I hear you can sing ; sing me a song.' The lady looked on this 
unceremonious manner of asking a favor with distaste, and positively re- 
fused. He said, ' She should sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, 
I suppose you take nie for one of your poor English hedge-parsons ; sing 
wlien I bid you' As the Earl did nothing but laugh at this freedom, the 
lady was so vexed that she burst into tears and retired. His first compli- 
ment to her when he saw her again was, 'Pray, madani, are you as proud 
and ill natured now as when I saw you last < ' To which she answered 
with great good-humor, 'No, Mr. Dean; I'll sing for you if you please.' 
From which time he conceived a great esteem for her." — Scott's Life. 
" . . . . He had not the least tincture of vanity in his conversation. He 
was, perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. When he was po- 
lite, it was in a manner entirely his own. In his friendships he was constant 
and undisguised. He was the same in his enmities." — Orreky. 

t " I make no figure but at court, where I affect to turn from a lord to 
the meanest of my acquaintances." — Journal to Stella. 

" I am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their 
books and poems, the vilest I ever saw ; but I have given their names to 
my man, never to let them see me." — Journal to Stella. 

The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier : — 

" Did I ever tell you that the Lord Treasurer hears ill with the left 
ear, just as I do ' .... I dare not tell him that I am so, for fear he should 
think that J countojeited to make my court ! " — Journal to Stella. 



SWIFT. 107 

wa}' from St. James's ; and he waits and waits until nightfall, 
when his runners come and tell him that the coach has 
taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his 
pistols into the air with a curse, and rides away into his 
own country.* 

* The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the 
other: and the Whig attacks made the Ministry Swift served very sore. 
Bolingbroke laid hold of several of the Opposition pamphleteers, and be- 
wails their " factitiousness " in the following letter ; — 

Bolingbroke to the Earl of Strafford. 

Whitehall, July 23rd, 1712. 

" It is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are too 
weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who presume to 
blacken the brightest characters, and to give even scurrilous language 
to those who are in the first degrees of honor. This, my lord, among 
others, is a symptom of the decayed condition of our Government, and 
serves to show how fatally we mistake licentiousness for liberty. All I 
could do was to take up Hart, the printer, to send him to Newgate, and to 
bind him over upon bail to be prosecuted ; this I have done ; and if I can 
arrive at legal proof against the author, Ridpath, he shall have the same 
treatment." 

Swift was not behind his illustrious friend in this virtuous indignation. 
In the history of the four last years of the Queen, the Dean speaks in the 
most edifying manner of the licentiousness of the press and the abusive 
language of the other party : — 

"It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have 

been such as to deserve the severest animadversion from the public 

The adverse party, full of rage and leisure since their fall, and unanimous 
in their cause, employta set of writers by subscription, who are well versed 
in all the topics of defamation, and have a style and genius levelled to the 

generality of their readers However, the mischiefs of the press were 

too exorbitant to be cured by such a remedy as a tax upon small papers, 
and a bill for a much more effectual regulation of it was brought into the 
House of Commons, but so late in the session that there was no time to 
pass it, for there always appeared an unwillingness to cramp overmuch the 
liberty of the press." 

But to a clause in the proposed bill, that the names of authors should 
be set to every printed book, pamphlet or paper, his Reverence objects 
altogether ; for, says he, " besides the objection to this clause from the 
practice of pious men, who, in publishing excellent writings for the service 
of religion, have chosen, out of an /nimble Christian spirit, to conceal their 
7ianies, it is certain that all persons of true genius or knowledge have an 
invincible modesty and suspicion of themselves upon first sending their 
thoughts into the world." 

This " invincible modesty " was no doubt the sole reason which induced 
the Dean to keep the secret of the " Drapier's Letters " and a hundred 
humble Christian works of which he was the author. As for the Op- 
position, the Doctor was for dealing severely with them : he writes to 
Stella ; 



108 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

" Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral 
or adorn a tale of ambition, as an}- hero's that ever hved and 
failed. But we must remember that the moralit}^ was lax — 
that other gentlemen besides himself took the road in his day 
— that public societj^ was in a strange disordered condition, 
and the State was ravaged bv other condottieri. The Boyne 
was being fought and won, and lost — the bells rung in Wil- 
liam's victor}-, in the very same tone with which they would 
have pealed for James's. Men were loose upon politics, and 
had to shift for themselves. The}-, as well as old beliefs and 
institutions, had lost their moorings and gone adrift in the 
storm. As in the South Sea Bubble, almost everj-body gam- 
bled ; as in the Railwa}" mania — not many centuries ago — 
almost ever}- one took his unlucky share : a man of that time, 
of the vast talents and ambition of Swift, could scarce do other- 
wise than grasp at his prize, and make his spring at his oppor- 
tunity. His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent 
misanthropy, are ascribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate 
conviction of mankind's unwortliiness, and a desire to amend 
them by castigating. His youth was bitter, as that of a great 
genius bound down by ignoble ties, and powerless in a mean 
dependence ; his age was bitter,* like that of a great genius 
that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it, and 
thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man 
may attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own 

Journal. Letter XIX. 

" London, March 25th, 1710-11. 

" . . . . We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him 
pickled in a trougli this fortniglit for twopence a piece ; and the fellow that 
showed would point to his body and say, ' See, gentlemen, this is the wound 
that was given him by his Grace the Duke of Ormond ; ' and, ' Tliis is the 
wound,' &c. ; and then the show was over, and another set of rabble came 
in. 'Tis hard that our laws would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, 
because he was not tried; and in the eye of the law every man is innocent 
till then " 

Journal. Letter XXVII. 

" London, July 25th, 1711. 

" I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped to 
hinder a man of his pardon, who is condemned for a rape. The Under 
Secretary was willing to save him ; but I told the Secretary he could not 
pardon him without a favorable report from the Judge ; besides, he was a 
fiddler, and consequently a rogue, and deserved hanging for something 
else, and so he shall swing." 

* It was his constant practice to keep his birthday as a day of 
mourning. 



SWIFT. 109 

fury, or disappointment, or self-will. What public man — what 
statesman projecting a coup — what king determined on an in- 
vasion of his neighbor — what satirist meditating an onslaught 
on society or an individual, can't give a pretext for his move ? 
There was a French general the other day who proposed to 
march into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in re- 
venge for humanity outraged by our conduct at Copenha^j-en : 
there is always some excuse for men of the aggressive turn. 
The3^ are of their nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight, 
plunder, dominion.* 

As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck — as strong a wino- 
as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate 
wrested the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings and chained 
him. One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the 
lonely eagle chained behind the bars. 

That Swift was born at No. 7 Hoey's Court, Dublin, on the 
30th November, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will 
deny the sister island the honor and glory ; but, it seems to 
me, he was no more an Irishman than a man born of English 
parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. f Goldsmith was an Irishman, 

* " These devils of Grub Street rogues, that write the Fitting Post and 
Medley in one paper, will not be quiet. They are always mauling Lord 
Treasurer, Lord Bolingbroke, and me. We have the dog under prosecu- 
tion, but Bolingbroke is not active enough ; but I hope to swinge him. He 
is a S(,'otch rogue, one Ridpath. They get out upon bail, and write on. 
We take them again, and get fresh bail; so it goes round." — Journal to 
Stella. 

t Swift was by no means inclined to forget such considerations ; ahd 
his English birth makes its mark, strikingly enough, every now and then 
in his writings. Thus in a letter to Pope (Scott's Swift, vol. xix. p. 97), 
he says : — * " 

" We have had your volume of letters Some of those who 

highly value you, and a few who knew you personally, are grieved to find 
you make no distinction between the English gentry of this kingdom, and 
the savage old Irish (wlio are only the vulgar, and some gentlemen M'ho 
live in the Irish parts of the kingdom) ; but tlie English colonies, who are 
three parts in four, are mucli more civilized tlian many counties in Eng- 
land, and speak better English, and are much better bred." 

And again, in the fourth Drapier's Letter, we have the following : — 

" A short paper, printed at Bristol, and reprinted here, reports Mr. 
Wood to say ' tliat he wonders at the impudence and insolence of the 
Irish in refusing his coin.' When, by the way, it is the true English 
people of Ireland who refuse it, although we take it for granted that the 
Irish will do so too whenever they are asked." — Scott's Swift, vol. vi, 
p. 453. 

He goes further, in a good-humored satirical paper, " On Barbarous 
Denominations in Ireland," where (after abusing, as he was wont, the 
Scotch cadence, as well as expression,) he advances to the "Irish brogue," 
and speaking of the " censure " which it brings down, says : — 



110 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

and always an Irishman : Steele was an Irishman, and always 
an Irishman : Swift's heart was English and in England, his 
habits English, his logic eminentl}^ English ; his statement is 
elaboratel}' simple ; he shuns tropes and metaphors, and uses 
his ideas and words with a wise thrift and econom\\ as he 
used his money : with which he could be generous and splendid 
upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when there was 
no need to spend it. He never indulges in needless extrava- 
gance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays 
his opinion before 3'Ou with a grave simplicity and a perfect neat- 
ness.* Dreading ridicule too, as a man of his humor — above 
all an Englishman of his humor — certainly would, he is afraid 
to use the poetical power which he reall}^ possessed ; one often 
fancies in reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he 
might ; that he does not speak above his voice, as it were, and 
the tone of societ}'. 

His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his 
knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, 
which he could not have pursued ver3'' sedulously during that 
reckless career at Dublin, Swift got under the roof of Sir Wil- 
liam Temple. He was fond of telling in after life what quan- 
tities of books he devoured there, and how King William taught 
him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at Shene 
and at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner 
at the upper servants' table, that this great and lonely Swift 

" And what is yet worse, it is too well known that the bad consequence 
of this opinion affects those among us who are not the least liable to such 
reproaches farther than the misfortune of being born in Ireland, although 
of English parents, and w#iose education has been chiefly in that kingdom." 

— Scott's Sivift, vol. vii. p. 149. 

But, indeed, if we are to make nnijth'mrj of Race at all, we must call 
that man an Englishman whose father comes from an old Yorkshire 
family, and his mother from an old Leicestershire one ! 

* " The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that 
of his writings, concise and clear and strong. Being one day at a Sheriff's 
feast, who amongst other toasts called out to him, ' Mr. Dean, The Trade 
of Ireland ! ' he answered quick : ' Sir, I drink no memories !'.... 

" Happening to be in company with a petulant young man who prided 
himself on saying pert things . . . and who cried out — ' You must know, 
Mr. Dean, that I set up for a wit 1 ' * Do you so ? ' says the Dean. * Take 
my advice, and sit down again ! ' 

" At another time, being in company, where a lady whisking her long 
train [long trains were then in fashion] swept down a fine fiddle and broke 
it ; Swift cried out — 

' Mantua vse miserae nimium vicina Cremonae ! ' " 

— Dr. Delany : Observations upon Lord Orrery's " Remarks, ^c. on Swijl." 
Loudon, 1754. 



SWIFT. Ill 

passed a ten years' apprenticeship — wore a cassock that was 
only not a livery — bent down a knee as proud as Lucifer's 
to supplicate my lady's good graces, or run on his honor's 
errands.* It was here, as he was writing at Temple's table, or 
following his patron's walk, that he saw and heard the men who 
had governed the great world — measured himself with them, 
looking up from his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed 
their wits, turned them, and tried them; and marked them. 
Ah ! what platitudes he must have heard ! what feeble jokes ! 
what pompous commonplaces ! what small men the}' must have 
seemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, un- 
couth, silent Irish secretary. I wonder whether it ever struck 
Temple, that that Irishman was his master? I suppose that 
dismal conviction did not present itself under the ambrosial wig, 
or Temple could never have lived with Swift. Swift sickened, 
rebelled, left the service — ate humble pie, and came back 
again ; and so for ten years went on, gathering learning, swal- 
lowing scorn, and submitting with a stealthy rage to his fortune. 
Temple's st3de is the perfection of practised and eas}' good 
breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply into a sub- 
ject, he professes a ver}' gentlemanl}' acqui\intance with it ; 
if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom of 
his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelop 
his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he 
wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with 
a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find 
them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in 
the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated 
for him., he politel}^ leaves it. He retires to his retreat of 
Shene or Moor Park ; and lets the King's party and the Prince 
of Orange's party battle it out among themselves. He re- 
veres the Sovereign (and no man perhaps ever testified to 
his loyalty by so elegant a bow) ; he admires the Prince of 
Orange ; but there is one person whose ease and comfort he 
loves more than all the princes in Christendom, and that val- 
uable member of society is himself Gulielmus Temple, Baro- 
nettus. One sees him in his retreat ; between his study-chair 
and his tulip-beds, t clipping his apricots and pruning his es- 

* " Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir WiUiam 
Temple would look cold and out of humor for three or four days, and I 
used to suspect a hundred reasons ? I have plucked up my spirits smce 
then, faith : he spoiled a fine gentleman." — Journal to Stella. 

t " . . . The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and for- 
tunate in their expression, when they placed a man's happiness in the 



112 ENGLISH humorist;^, 

says, — the statesman, the ambassador no more; but the phi- 
losopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at 
St. James's as at Shene ; where in place of kings and fair 
ladies, he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty ; or walks 
a minuet with the Epic Muse ; or dallies by the south wall 
with the ruddy n3'mph of gardens. 

Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal 
of veneration from his household, and to have been coaxed, 
and warmed, and cuddled by the people round about him, as 
delicately as any of the plants which he loved. ^Yhen he fell 
ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his indisposition : mild 
Dorothea his wife, the best companion of the best of men — 

" Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, 
Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate." 

As for Dorinda — his sister — 

" Those who would grief describe, might come and trace 
Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. 

tranquillity of his mind and indolence of body ; for while we are composed 
of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As 
men of several languages say the same things in very different words, so in 
several ages, countri*es, constitutions of laws and religion, the same thing 
seems to be meant by very different expressions : what is called by the 
Stoics apathy, or dispassion ; by the sceptics, indisturbance ; by the Moli- 
nists, quietism ; by common men, peace of conscience, — seems all to mean 
but great tranquillity of mind. . . . For this reason Epicurus passed his 
life wholly in his garden ; there lie studied, there he exercised, there he 
taught his philosophy ; and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to con- 
tribute so much to l)0th the tranquillity of mind and indolence of body, 
which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness 
of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the 
exercise of working or walking ; but, above all, the exemption from cares 
and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation and 
health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and 
ease both of the body and mind. . . , Where Paradise was, has been much 
debated, and little agreed ; but what sort of place is meant by it may 
perhaps easier be conjectured. It seems to have been a Persian word, 
since Xenophon and other Greek authors mention it as what was much in 
use and delight among the kings of those eastern countries. Strabo de- 
scribing Jericho : 'Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtas sunt etiam aliae stirpes 
hortenses, locus ferax palmis abundans, spatio stadiorum centum, totus 
ii'riguus : ibi est Regis Balsami paradisus.' " — Essatj on Gardens. 

In the same famous essay Temple speaks of a fi'iend, whose conduct 
and prudence he characteristically admires : 

" .... I thought it very prudent in a gentleman of ray friends in 
Staffordshire, who is a great lover of his garden, to pretend no higher, 
though his soil be good enough, than to the perfection of plums ; and in 
these (by bestowing south walls upon them) he has very well succeeded, 
which he could never have done in attempts upon peaches and grapes ; 
and a good plum is certainly better than an ill peach." 



SWIFT. 113 

To see her weep, joy every face forsook, 

And grief flung sables on eacli menial look. 

The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, 

That furnished spirit and motion through the whole." 

Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the 
menials into a mourning liver}', a fine image? One of the me- 
nials wrote it, who did not like that Temple liver}- nor those 
twent}' pound wages. Cannot one fancy the uncouth 3'oung 
servitor, with downcast e^^es, books and papers in hand, fol- 
lowing at his honor's heels in the garden walk ; or taking his 
lienor's orders as he stands b}' the great chair, where !Sir Wil- 
liam has the gout, and his feet all blistered with moxa ? AVhen 
Sir William has the gout or scolds it must be hard work at the 
second table ; * the Irish secretary owned as much afterwards ; 
and when he came to dinner, how he must have lashed and 
growled and torn the household with his gibes and scorn ! 

* Swift's Thoughts on Hanging. 

{Directions to Servants.) 

" To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all indignities; 
therefore, when you find years coming on without hopes of a place at 
court, a command in tlie army, a succession to the stewardship, an employ- 
ment in the revenue (which two last you cannot obtain without reading 
and writing), or running away with your master's niece or daughter, I 
directly advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honor 
]eft you : there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short 
life and a nxerry one, and make a figure at your exit, wherein I will give 
you some instructions. 

" The last advice I give you relates to your behavior when you are 
going to be hanged : which, either for robbing your master, for house- 
breaking, or going upon the highway, or in a drunken qnarrel by killing 
the first man you meet, may very probably be your lot, and is owing to one 
of these three qualities : either a love of good-fellowship, a generosity of 
mind, or too much vivacity of spirits. Your good behavior on tliis article 
will concern your whole community : deny the fact with iill ."solemnity of 
imprecations : a hundred of j^our brethren, if they can be admitted, will 
attend about the bar, and be read.y upon demand to give you a charncter 
before the Court ; let nothing prevail on you to confess, but tlie promise of 
a pardon for discovering your comrades : but I suppose all this to be in 
vain ; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same anotlier day. Get 
a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate : some of your kind 
wenches will provide you with a hoUand sliirt and white cap, crowned 
with a crimson or black ribbon : take leave cheerfully of all your friends 
in Newgate: mount the cart with courage; fall on yonr knees; lift up 
your eyes ; hold a book in your hands, although you cannot read a word ; 
deny the fact at the gallows ! kiss and forgive the hangman, and so fare- 
well ; you sliall be buried in pomp at the charge of the fraternity: the 
surgeon shall not touch a limb of you ; and your fame shall continue until 
a successor of equal renown succeeds in your place. 

8 



,.>• • • 



114 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

What would the steward say about the pride of them Irish 
schollards — and this one had got no great credit even at his 
Irish college, if the truth were known — and what a contempt 
his Excellencj^'s own gentleman must have had for Parson 
Teague from Dublin. (The valets and chaplains were alwa3's 
at war. It is hard to say which Swift thought the more con- 
temptible.) And what must have been the sadness, the sad- 
ness and terror, of the housekeeper's little daughter with the 
curling black ringlets and the sweet smiling face, when the sec- 
retary who teaches her to read and write, and whom she loves 
and reverences above all things — above mother, above mild 
Dorothea, above that tremendous Sir William in his square- 
toes and periwig, — when Mr. Swift comes down from his mas- 
ter with rage in his heart, and has not a kind word even for 
little Hester Johnson ? 

Perhaps for the Irish secretary, his Excellenc^^'s condescen- 
sion was even more cruel than bis frowns. Sir William would 
perpetuall}' quote Latin and the ancient classics apropos of his 
gardens and his Dutch statues and j^lcftes-bandes, and talk about 
Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Csesar, Semiramis, and 
the gardens of the Ilesperides, Maecenas, Strabo describing 
Jericho, and the Ass3'rian kings. Ajjropos of beans, he w^ould 
mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that 
this precept probabh' meant that wise men should abstain from 
public affairs. ^ is a placid Epicurean ; he is a Pythagorean 
philosopher; he i'S, a wise man — that is the deduction. Does 
not Swift think so? One can imagine the downcast eyes hfted 
up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which the}' emit. 
Swift's e^-es were as azure as the heavens ; Pope says nobly 
(as everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good 
and noble), " His e^-es are as azure as the heavens, and have a 
charming archness in them." And one person in that house- 
hold, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven 
nowhere else. 

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree 
with Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins ; 
and in a garden-seat which he devised for himself at Moor 
Park, and where he devoured greedil}^ the stock of books 
within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which pun- 
ished and tormented him throuoh life. He could not bear the 
place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condo- 
lence, from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melan- 
choly, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a mad 
shriek, as it were, and rushes awa}^ crying his own grief, curs- 



SWIFT. 115 

ing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune, 
and even hope. 

I don't know anything more melanchoty than the letter to 
Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the 
poor wretch crouches piteouslj- towards his cage again, and 
deprecates his master's anger. He asks for testimonials for 
orders. "The particulars required of me are what relate to 
morals and learning ; and the reasons of quitting your honor's 
family — that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill 
action. They are left entirely to 3^our honor's mere}', thougli 
in the first I think I cannot reproach myself for anything fur- 
ther than for injirmities. This is all I dare at present beg from 
your honor, under circumstances of life not worth 3'our regard : 
what is left me to wish (next to the health and prosperitj^ of 
your honor and family) is that Heaven would one da}' allow 
me the opportunit}' of leaving my acknowledgments at your 
feet. I beg my most humble dut}' and service be presented to 
my ladies, your honor's lady and sister." — Can prostration 
fall deeper ? could a slave bow lower ? * 

Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet describing the same 
man, saj's, "Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had 

* " He continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that 
great man." — Anecdotes ofihe FWmilt/ of Swift, by the Dean. 

" It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to him 
self." — Preface to Temple's Works. 

Op all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. 
But the reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the 
indignities he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from 
the Journal to Stella : — 

" I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d ailed 

him on Sunday : I made him a very proper speech ; told him I observed 
he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the 
cause, but would be glad to see he was in better ; and one thing I warned 
him of — never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a 
schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life already " (meanim/ 
Sir William Temple), &c. &c. — Journal to Stella. 

" I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William 
Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty ; and here 
is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment." — Ibid. 

'■ The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often 
thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary 
of State." — Ibid. 

" Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now 
quite well. I was playing at one-andthirty with him and his family the 
other night. He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with; it put me 
in mind of Sir William Temple." — Ibid. 

" I thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir William] and his wife 
pass by me to-day in their coach : but I took no notice of them. I am glad 
I have wholly shaken off that family."— :*S'. to S. Sept. 1710. 



116 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

a bow from eveiybod}' but me. When I came to tlie ante- 
chamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the 
principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting the 
Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, 
to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Tho- 
rold to undertake with my Lord Treasurer, that he should 
obtain a salary of 200/. per annum as member of the English 
Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going 
in to the Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had 
something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took 
out his gold watch, and telling the time of day, complained 
that it wa-s very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. 
'• How can I help it,' sa3's the Doctor, ' if the courtiers give me 
a watch that won't go right ? ' Then he instructed a young 
nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Pa- 
pist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English, for 
which he would have them all subscribe : ' For,' sa3's he, 'he 
shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.'* 
Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the 
room beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him, — both went off just 
before prayers." There's a little malice in the Bishop's "just 
before prayers." 

This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is 
harsh, though not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, 
and to deserving men too, in the midst of these intrigues and 
triumphs. His journals and a thousand anecdotes of him relate 
his kind acts and rough manners. His hand was constantly 
stretched out to relieve an honest man — he was cautious about 
his money, but ready. — If you were in a strait would you 
like such a benefactor? I think I would rather have had a po- 
tato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been be- 
holden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner. t He insulted 

* " Swift must be allowed," says Dr. Johnson, " for a time, to have 
dictated the political opinions of the English nation." 

A conversation on the Dean's pamphlets excited one of the Doctor's 
liveliest sallies. " One, in particular, praised his 'Conduct of the Allies.' 
— Johnson ; ' Sir, his ' Conduct of the Allies ' is a performance of very 
little ability. . . . Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written the ' Conduct 
of the Allies ! ' " — Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

t " Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, 
it was his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt ques- 
tion that boi-e the appearance of rudeness. If this were Avell taken, and 
answered with good humor, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. 
But if he saw any marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or 
conceit, he dropped all further intercourse with the party. This will be 
illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After 



SWIFT. . 117 

a man as be served him, made women cry, guests look foolish, 
bullied unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions into poor 
men's faces. No; the Dean was no Irishman — no Irishman 
ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart. 

It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean of 
St. Patrick's performed his famil}^ devotions ever}" morning 
regularly, but with such secrecy that the guests in his house 
were never in the least aware of the ceremonj-. There was no 
need surel}" why a church dignitarj^ should assemble his family- 
privily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathen perse- 
cution. But I think the world was right, and the bishops who 
advised Queen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint 
the author of the "Tale of a Tub" to a bishopric, gave per- 
fectly good advice. The man who wrote the arguments and 
illustrations in that wild book, could not but be aware what 
must be the sequel of the propositions which he laid down. 
The boon companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these 
as the friends of his life, and the recipients of his confidence 
and affection, must have heard many an argument, and joined 
in many a conversation over Pope's port, or St. John's bur- 
gundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other men's 
boards. 

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of 
Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn cler- 
gj'man, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author 
of the " Beggar's Opera" — Ga}^, the wildest of the wits about 
town — it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take 
^orders — to invest in a cassock and bands — just as he advised 
him to husband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out 

supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained 
into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to 
drink it. ' For,' said he, ' I always keep some poor parson to drink the 
foul wine for me.' Mr. Pilkington, entering into his humor, thanked him. 
and told him ' he did not know the difference, but was glad to get a glass 
at any rate.' ' Why, then,' said the Dean, 'you shan't, for I'll drink it 

myself. Why, take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate whom I 

asked to dine with me a few days ago; for upon my making the same 
speech to him, he said he did not understand such usage, and so walked off 
without his dinner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recom- 
mended him to me that the fellow was a blockhead, and I had do>ic witli 
him.' " — Sheridan's Life of Swijl. 



118 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

at interest.* The Queen, and the bishops, and the world, were 
right in mistrusting tlie rehgion of that man. 

I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's religious 
views, except in so far as the}- influence his literary character, 
his life, his humor. The most notorious sinners of all those 
fellow-mortals whom it is our business to discuss — Harry Field- 

* From the Archbishop of Cashell. 

" Cashell, May 31st, 1735. 

"Dear Sir, — I have been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, 
that I am resolved to have no more, especially where I am likely to be 
overmatched ; and as I have some reason to hope what is past will be for- 
gotten, I confess I did endeavor in my last to put the best color I could 
think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge right of my idleness ; 
but, in reality, it has hitherto proceeded from a hurry and confusion, 
arising from a thousand unlucky unforeseen accidents rather than mere 
sloth. I have but one troublesome affair now upon my hands, which; by 
the help of the prime serjeant, I hope soon to get rid of; and then you 
shall see me a true Irish bishop. Sir James Ware has made a very useful 
collection of the memorable actions of my predecessors. He tells me, 
they were born in such a town of England or Ireland ; were consecrated, 
such a year ; and if not translated, were buried in the Cathedral church, 
either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude, that a good bishop 
has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die ; which 
laudable example I propose for the remainder of my life to follow ; for to 
tell you the truth, I have for these four or five years past metwith so 
much treachery, baseness, and ingratitude among mankind, that I can 
hardly think it incumbent on any man to endeavor to do good to so per- 
verse a generation. 

"I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. 
Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take 
to recover your flesh ; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you 
can choose a road so suited to your circumstances, as from Dublin hither. 
You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve 
miles' end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no 
inns at all: but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high 
hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not 
poor ; his wife is allowed to be the best little woman in the world. Her 
chickens are the fattest, and her ale tlie best in all the country. Besides, 
the parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the ke}', where 
lie always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well 
corked, upon their side ; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I 
tliink, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach; if you be 
tired, you shall stay all night ; if not, after dinner, we will set out about 
four, and be at Cashell by nine ; and by going througli fields and by-ways, 
which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony 
roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainly very bad. 
I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set 
out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things pre- 
pared for you. It may be, if you ask him, Cope will come : he will do 
nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall 
add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, 
your most faithful and obedient servant, " Theo. Cashell." 



SWIFT. 119 

(ng and Dick Steele, were especially loud, and I believe really 
fervent, in their expressions of belief; they belabored free- 
thinkers, and stoned imaginar}^ atheists on all sorts of occa- 
sions, going out of their wa}' to bawl their own creed, and 
persecute their neighbor's, and if the}' sinned and stumbled, as 
they constantl}- did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad 
behavior, they got upon their knees and cried " Peccavi " with a 
most sonorous orthodox3\ Yes ; poor Harr}- Fielding and poor 
Dick Steele were trust}' and undoubting Church of England 
men ; the}' abhorred Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and 
idolatries in general ; and hiccupped Church and State with 
fervor. 

But Swift? His mind had had a different schooling, and 
possessed a very different logical power. He was not bred flp 
in a tipsy guard-room, and did not learn to reason in a Co vent 
Garden tavern. He could conduct an argument from beginning 
to end. He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In his 
old age, looking at the " Tale of a Tub," when he said, " Good 
God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book ! " I think 
he was admiring not the genius, but the consequences to which 
the genius had brought him — a vast genius, a magnificent 
genius, a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and strong, 
— to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood and scorch 
it into perdition, to penetrate into the hidden motives, and ex- 
pose the black thoughts of men, — an awful, an evil spirit. 

Ah man ! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you 
whose friends were Pope and St. John — what made you to 
swear to fatal vows, and bind .yourself to a life-long hypocrisy 
before the Heaven which you adored with such real wonder, 
humility, and reverence ? For Swift was a reverent, was a pious 
spirit — for Swift could love and could pray. Through the 
storms and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of religion 
and love break out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden 
by the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of his life. 

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the conscious- 
ness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so 
far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.* The paper left 
behind him, called " Thoughts on Religion," is merely a set of 
excuses for not professing disbelief. He says of his sermons 

* "Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but 
resolving to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to take 
orders. However, although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple 
of entering into the Church merely for support." — Anecdotes of the Family 
of Swift, by the Dean. 



1 20 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

that he preached pamphlets : they have scarce a Christian charac- 
teristic ; the}^ might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, 
or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house ahiiost. 
There is little or no cant — he is too great and too proud for 
that ; and, in so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is 
honest. But having put that cassock on, it poisoned him : he 
was strangled in his bands. He goes through life, tearing, like 
a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian 
story, he is always looking out for the Fur}', and knows that the 
night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, 
my God, it was ! what a lonely rage and long agon}- — what a 
vulture that tore the heart of that giant ! * It is awful to think 
of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always 
^ems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't fanc}- Shaks- 
peare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings have 
no company. But this man suffered so ; and deserved so to 
suffer. One hardl}- reads an3'where of such a pain. 

The " saeva indignatio " of which he spoke as lacerating his 
heart, and which he dares to inscribe on his tombstone — as if 
the wretch who la}' under that stone waiting God's judgment 
had a right to be angrv — breaks out from him in a thousand 
pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. Against men in 
office, he having been overthrown : against men in England, he 
having lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile 
neyer fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous 
'' I) rapier's Letters" patriotism! The}' are masterpieces of 
dreadful humor and invective: they are reasoned logicall}- 
enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as 
the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, 
but there is his enemy — the assault is wonderful for its activity 
and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rush- 
ing on his enemies and felhng them : one admires not the cause 
so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of the champion. 
As is the case with madmen, certain subjects provoke him, and 
awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage is one of these ; in a hun- 
dred passages in his writings he rages against it ; rages against 
children ; an object of constant satire, even more contemptible 
in his eyes than a lord's chaplain, is a poor curate with a large 
family. The idea of this lucldess paternity never fails to bring 

* " Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles 
could scarce soften, or his utmost gayety render placid and serene ; but 
when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible 
to imagine looks or features that carried in them more terror and au9 
t^rity." — Okkery. 



SWIFT. 121 

down from him gibes and foul language. Could Dick Steele, or 
Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most reckless moment of satire, 
have written anything like the Dean's famous "modest pro- 
posal" for eating children? Not one of these but melts at the 
thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr. Dean has 
no such softness, and enters the nurserj- with the tread and 
gayet}^ of an ogre.* "I have been assured," says he in the 
"Modest Proposal," "by a very knowing American of my 
acquaintance in London, that a young health}- child, well nursed, 
is, at a j'ear old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome 
food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ; and I make 
no doubt it will equall}" serve in a ragout." And taking up this 
pretty joke, as his way is, he argues it with perfect gravity and 
logic. He turns and twists this subject in a score of different 
waj's : he hashes it ; and he serves it up cold ; and he garnishes 
it; and relishes it alwa3's. He describes the little animal as 
" dropped from its dam," advising that the mother should let it 
suck plentifull}' in the last month, so as to render it plump and 
fat for a good table! "A child," says his Reverence, " will 
make two dishes at an entertainment for friends ; and when the 
family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reason- 
able dish," and so on ; and, the subject being so delightful that 
he can't leave it, he proceeds to recommend, in place of venison 
for squires' tables, " the bodies of young lads and maidens not 
exceeding fourteen or under twelve." Amiable humorist ! laugh- 
ing castigator of morals ! There was a process well known and 
practised in the Dean's gay days : when a lout entered the 
coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called " roasting " 
him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean 
had a native oenius for it. As the " Almanach des Gourmands " 
says, On nait rotisseur. 

And it was not merely b}' the sarcastic method that Swift 
exposed the unreasonableness of loving and having children. 
In Gulliver, the folly of love and marriage is urged by graver 
arguments and advice. In the famous Lilliputian kingdom, 
Swift speaks with approval of the practice of instantly remov- 
ing children from their parents and educating them by the 
State ; and amongst his favorite horses, a pair of foals are 

* "London, April 10th, 1713. 

" Lady Masham's eldest boy is very ill : I doubt he will not live ; and 
she stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so exces- 
sively fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the Queen, but 
leave everything, to stick to what is so much the interest of the public as 
well as her own " — Journal. 



122 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

stated to be the very utmost a well-regulated equine couple 
would permit themselves. In fact, our great satirist was of 
opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the 
theory bj- his own practice and example — God help him — 
which made him about the most wretched being in God's 
world.* 

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as 
exemplified in the cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our 
author's constant method through all his works of humor. 
Given a countrv of people six inches or sixty feet high, and by 
the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities 
are evolved, at so man}' stages of the calculation. Turning to 
the first minister who waited behind him with a white stafl!" near 
as tall as the mainmast of the '' Ro3'al Sovereign," the King of 
Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human gran- 
deur is, as represented by such a contemptible little creature 
as Gulliver. "The Emperor of Lilliput's features are strong 
and masculine" (what a surprising humor there is in this 
description !) — " The Emperor's features," Gulliver says, " are 
strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip, an arched nose, 
his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs 
well proportioned, and his deportment majestic. He is taller 
by the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is 
enough to strike an awe into beholders." 

What a surprising humor there is in these descriptions ! 
How noble the satire is here ! how just and honest ! How per- 
fect the image ! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming lines 
of the poet, where the king of the pigmies is measured by the 
same standard. We have all read in Milton of the spear that 
was like " the mast of some tall admiral," but these images are 
surel}' likely to come to the comic poet originalh\ The subject 
is before him. He is turning it in a thousand ways. He is full 
of it. The figure suggests itself naturall}' to him, and comes 
out of his subject, as in that wonderful passage, when Gulliver's 
box having been dropped b}' the eagle into the sea, and Gulli- 
ver having been received into the ship's cabin, he calls upon 
the crew to bring the box into the cabin, and put it on the 
table, the cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is 
the veracity of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man 
come from such a country as Brobdingnag he would have 
blundered so. 

But the best stroke of humor, if there be a best in that 

* " My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and 
an aching heart." — In Maij, 1719. 



SWIFT. 123 

abounding book, is that where GulUver, in the unpronounceable 
countr}', describes his parting from his master tlie horse.* " I 

* Perhaps the most melancholy satire m the whole of the dreadful 
book, is the description of the very old people in the " Voyage to Laputa." 
At Lugnag, Gulliver hears of some persons who never die, called the 
Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish to become acquainted with men who 
must have so much learning and experience, his coUoquist describes the 
Struldbrug's to him. 

" He said : They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years 
old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increas- 
ing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own 
confession : for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species 
born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. 
When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of 
living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of 
other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect 
of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, 
morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural 
affection, wliich never descended below their grandchildren Envy and 
impotent desires are tlieir prevailing passions. But those objects against 
which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger 
sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find 
themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure ; and whenever they see 
a funeral, they lament, and repine that others are gone to a harbor of 
rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no 
remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their 
youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. And for the truth 
or particulars of sCny fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than 
upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them 'appear to 
be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories ; these meet 
with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which 
abound in others. 

" If a Struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is 
dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger 
of the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it a reasonable 
indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, 
to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery 
doubled by the load of a wife. 

" As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are 
looked on as dead in law ; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, 
only a small pittance is reserved for their support ; and the poor ones are 
maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapa- 
ble of any employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or 
take leases, neither are they allowed to ])e witnesses in any cause, either 
civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds. 

" At ninety they lose their teeth and hair ; they have at that age no 
distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish 
or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue without in- 
creasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation 
of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest 
friends and relations. For the same reason, they can never anmse them- 
selves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them 
from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they 



124 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

took," he says, " a second leave of m}- master, but as I was 
going to prostrate m3'self to kiss his hoof, he did me the honor 
to raise it gentl}^ to m}^ mouth. I am not ignorant how much 
I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. De- 
tractors are pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a 
person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction 
to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how 
apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary- favors thej^ 
have received. But if these censurers were better acquainted 
with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houjhnhnms 
they would soon change their opinion." 

The surprise here, the audacit}' of circumstantial evidence, 
the astounding gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how 
much he has been censured, the nature of the favor conferred, 
and the respectful exultation at the receipt of it, are surel}- 
complete ; it is truth topsy-turv}-, entirely logical and absurd. 

As for the humor and conduct of this famous fable, I sup- 
pose there is no person who reads but must admire ; as for the 

are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be 
capable. 

"The language of this country being always upon the flux, the Struld- 
brngs of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, 
after two hunthvd years, to hold any conversation (further than by a few 
general woj-ils) with their neighbors, the mortals; and thus they lie under 
the disailvantage of living like foreigners in their own country. 

"This was tlie account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can 
remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, t!ie youngest not 
above two hundred years ohl, who were brought to me at several times by 
some of my friends ; but although they were told 'that I was a great 
traveller, and had seen all the world,' they had not the least curiosity to 
ask me a question ; only desired I would give them slumskudask, or a 
token of remembrance, which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the 
law, that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, 
altiiough indeed with a very scanty allowance. 

"They are despised and liated by all sorts of people ; when one of them 
is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particu- 
larly ; so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, 
however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has 
been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of 
computing how old they are, is by asking them what kings or great persons 
they can remember, and then consulting history ; for infallibly the last 
prince irt their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years 
old. 

"They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women 
more horrible than the men ; besides the usual deformities in extreme old 
age, they acquired an additional gliastliness, in proportion to their number 
of years, which is not to be described ; and among half a dozen, I soon 
distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a century 
or two between them. " — Gulliver's Travels. 



SWIFT. 125 

moral, I think it horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous ; 
and giant and great as this Dean is, I sa}' we should hoot him. 
Some of tliis audience ma3n't have read the last part of Gulliver, 
and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. 
Punch to persons about to many, and say "Don't." When 
Gulliver first lands among the Yahoos, the naked howhno- 
wretches clamber up trees and assault him, and he describes 
himself as '' almost stifled with the filth which fell abput him." 
The reader of the fourth part of " GulUver's Travels" is like 
the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo language : a 
monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against 
mankind — tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense 
of manliness and shame ; filthy in word, filthy in thought, 
furious, raging, obscene. 

And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of 
his creed — the fatal rocks towards which his logic desperate)}' 
drifted. That last part of Gulliver is only a consequence of 
what has gone before ; and the worthlessness of all mankind, 
the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecilitv, the general vanit^y, the 
foolish pretension, the mock greatness, the pompous dulness, 
the mean aims, the base successes — all these were present to 
him ; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphe- 
mies against heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to 
write his dreadful allegor}^ — of which the meaning is that man 
is utterl}- wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and his passions are 
so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that he is and 
deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than 
his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret re- 
morse was rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in 
him, that he should see all the world bloodshot? We view 
the world with our own eyes, each of us ; and we make from 
within us the world we see. A weary heart gets no gladness 
out of sunshine ; a selfish man is sceptical about friendship, as 
a man with no ear doesn't care for music. A frightful self- 
consciousness it must have been, which looked on mankind so 
darkl}' through those keen e3'es of Swift. 

A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delan}', who inter- 
rupted Archbishop King and Swift in a conversation which left 
the prelate in tears, and from which Swift rushed away with 
marks of strong terror and agitation in his countenance, upon 
which the Archbishop said to Delan}^, " You have just met the 
most unhapp3^ man on earth ; but on the subject of his wretch- 
edness you must never ask a question." 

The most unhappy man on earth ; — Miserrimus — what a 



126 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

character of him ! And at this time all the great wits of Eng- 
land had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after him, 
and worshipped him as a liberator, a savior, the greatest Irish 
patriot and citizen. Dean Drapier Bickerstaff Gulliver — the 
most famous statesmen, and the greatest poets of his daj^, had 
applauded him, and done him homage ; and at this time, 
writing over to Bolingbroke from Ireland, he sa3's, " It is time 
for me t^ have done with the world, and so I would if I could 
get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die 
here in a rage^ like a poisoned rat in a hole.^^ 

We have spoken about the men, and Swift's behavior to 
them ; and now it behoves us not to forget that there are cer- 
tain other persons in the creation who had rather intimate 
relations with the great Dean.* Two women whom he loved 
and injured are known by every reader of books so familiarl}- 
that if we had seen them, or if thej' had been relatives of our 
own, we scarcely could have known them better. Who hasn't 
in his mind an image of Stella? Who does not love her? Fair 
and tender creature : pure and affectionate heart ! Boots it to 
3'ou, now that 3'ou have been at rest for a hundred and twenty- 
years, not divided in death from the cold heart which caused 
yours, whilst it beat, such faithful pangs of love and grief — 
boots it to 3'Ou now, that the whole world loves and deplores 
3'Ou? Scarce an3^ man, I believe, ever thought of that grave, 
that did not cast a flower of pit3' on it, and write over it a 
sweet epitaph. Gentle lad3', so lovel3', so loving, so unhapp3'' ! 
you have had countless champions ; millions of manl3' hearts 

* The name of Varina lias been thrown into the shade by those of the 
famous Stella and Vanessa ; but she had a story of her own to tell about 
the blue eyes of young Jonathan. One may say that the book of Swift's 
Life opens at places kept by these blighted flowers ! Varina must have a 
paragraph. 

She was a Miss Jane Waryng, sister to a college chum of his. In 1696, 
when Swift was nineteen years old, we find him writing a love-letter to 
her, beginning, " Impatience is the most inseparable quality of a lover." 
But absence made a great difference in his feelings ; so, four years after- 
« wards, the tone is changed. He writes again, a very curious letter, offering 
to marry her, and putting the offer in such a way that nobody could 
possibly accept it. 

After dwelling on his poverty, &c. he says, conditionally, "I shall be 
blessed to have you in my arms, without regarding whether your person 
be beautiful, or your fortune large. Cleanliness in the first, and compe- 
tency in the second, is all I ask for ! " 

The editors do not tell us what became of Varina in life. One would 
be glad to know that she met with some worthy partner, and lived long 
enough to see her little boys laughing over Lilliput, without any arriere 
pensie of a sad character about the great Dean ! 



SWIFT. 127 

mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up 
the fond tradition of your beaut}^ ; we watch and follow your 
tragedy, your bright morning love and purity, your constancy^ 
3'our grief, 3'our sweet martyrdom. We know 3'our legend by 
heart. You are one of the saints of English story. 

And if Stella's love and innocence are charming to contem- 
plate, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, 
in spite of m3'sterious separation and union, of hope dela3'ed 
and sickened heart — in the teeth of Vanessa, and that little 
episodical aberration which plunged Swift into such woful pit- 
falls and quagmires of amorous perplexit3' — in spite of the 
verdicts of most women, 1 believe, w^ho, as far as m3' experi- 
ence and conversation go, generalh' take Vanessa's part in the 
controvers3^ — in spite of the tears which Swift caused Stella 
to shed, and the rocks and barriers which fate and temper inter- 
posed, and which prevented the pure course of that true love 
from running smoothlv — the brightest part of Swift's story, 
the pure star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift's, is his 
love for Hester Johnson. It lias been m3^ business, profession- 
all3' of course, to go through a deal of sentimental reading in 
m3' time, and to acquaint m3'self with love-making, as it has 
been described in various languages, and at various ages of the 
world ; and I know of nothing more manl3', more tender, more 
exquisitel3' touching, than some of these brief notes, written in 
what Swift calls " his little language" in his journal to Stella.* 
He writes to her niolit and mornino- often. He never sends awa^' 
a letter to her but he begins a new one on the same da3\ He 
can't bear tcf let go her kind little hand, as it were. He knows 
that she is thinking of him, and longing for him far away in 
Dublin 3'onder. He takes her letters from under his pillow and 
talks to them, familiarl3', paternall3', with fond epithets and prett3' 
caresses — as he would to the sweet and artless creature who 
loved him. " Sta3'," he writes one morning — it is the 14th of 

* A sentimental Champollion might find a good deal of matter for his 
art, in expounding the symbols of tlie " Little Language." Usually, Stella 
is " M.D.," but sometimes her companion, Mrs. Dingley, is included in it. 
Swift is •' Presto ; " also P.D.F.R. We have " Good-night, M.D. ; Night, 
M.D. ; Little, M.D. ; Stellakins ; Pretty Stella ; Dear, roguish, impudent, 
pretty M.D." Every now and then he breaks into rhyme, as — 

" I wish you both a merry new year, 
Roast-beef, minced-pies, and good strong beer, 
And me a share of your good cheer. 
That I was there, as you were here. 
And you are a little saucy dear." 



128 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

December, 1710 — " Sta}*, I will answer some of your letter this 
morning in bed. Let me see. Come and appear, little letter ! 
Here I am, says he, and what sa}- 3011 to Stella this morning 
fresh and fasting? And can Stella read this writing without 
hurting her dear ej'es? " he goes on, after more kind i)rattle and 
fond whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then — 
the good angel of his life is with him and blessing him. Ah, 
it was a hard fate that wrunoj from them so many tears, and 
stabbed pitilessly that pure and tender bosom. A hard fate : 
but would she have changed it? I have heard a woman sa}^ that 
she would have taken Swift's cruelt}^ to have had his tenderness. 
He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He 
speaks of her after she is gone ; of her wit, of lier kindness, of 
her grace, of her beauty, with a simple love and reverence that 
are indescribabh' touching ; in contemplation of her goodness 
his hard heart melts into pathos ; his cold rhyme kindles and 
glows into poetr}' , and he falls down on his knees, so to speak, 
before the angel whose life he had embittered, confesses his 
own wretchedness and unworthihess, and adores her with cries 
of remorse and love : — 

" When on my sickly couch I lay, 
Impatient both of night and day, 
And groaning in unmanly strains, 
Called every power to ease my pains, 
Then Stella ran to my relief. 
With cheerful face and inward grief. 
And though by heaven's severe decree 
She suffers hourly more than me, 
No cruel master could require 
From slaves employed for daily hire. 
What Stella, by her friendship warmed, 
With vigor and delight performed. 
Now, with a soft and silent tread, 
Unheard she moves about my "bed : 
My sinking spirits now supplies 
With cordials in her hands arid eyes. 
Best pattern of true friends ! beware ; • 
You pay too dearly for your care 
If, while your tenderness secures 
My life, it must endanger yours : 
For such a fool was never found 
Who pulled a palace to the ground, 
Only to have the ruins made 
Materials for a house decayed." 

One little triumph Stella had in her life — one dear little 
piece of injustice was performed in her favor, for which I con- 
fess, for my part, I can't help thanking fate auvl the Dean. 



SWIFT. 129 

9 
That other person was sacrificed to her — that — that 3*oung 
woman, who lived five doors from Dr. Swift's lodgings in Bury 
Street, and who flattered him, and made love to him in such an 
outrageous manner — Vanessa was thrown over. 

Swift did not keep Stella's letters to him in repl}- to those 
he wrote to her.* He kept Bolingbroke's, and Pope's, and 
Harley's, and Peterborough's: but Stella, "very carefull}'," 
the Lives sa}', kept Swift's. Of course : that is the way of the 
world : and so we cannot tell what her st3'le was, or of what sort 
were the little letters which the Doctor placed there at night, 
and bade to appear from under his pillow of a morning. But in 
Letter IV. of that famous collection he describes his lodo-ino- 
in Bury Street, where he has the first-floor, a dining-room and 
bedchamber, at eight shillings a week ; and in Letter VI. ho 

* The following passages are from a paper begun by Swift on the evens 
ing of the day of her death, Jan. 28, 1727-8 ; — 

" She was sickly from lier c;luldhood, until about the ago of fifteen; but 
then she grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most 
beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London — only a little 
too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face 
in perfection. 

" . . . . Properly speaking " — he goes on, with a calmness which, under 
the circumstances, is terrible — "she has been dying six months! .... 

" Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who 

more improved them l)y reading and conversation All of us who had 

the happiness of her friendship agreed unanimously, that in an afternoon's 
or evening's conversation she never failed before we parted of delivering 
the best thing that was said in the company. Some of us have written 
down .-several of her sayings, or what the French call bons mots, wherein she 
excelled beyond belief." 

The specimens on record, however, in the Dean's paper, called " Bons 
Mots de Stella," scarcely bear out this last part of the panegyric. But the 
following prove her wit : — 

" A gentleman who had been very silly and pert in her company, at 
last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A 
bishop sitting by comforted him — that he should be easy, because ' the 
child was gone to heaven.' ' No, my lord,' said she ; ' that is it which most 
grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there.' 

" When she was extremely ill, her phj'sician said, * Madam, you are 
near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavor to get you up again.' She 
answered, ' Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the 
top.' 

" A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness 
and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be 
so dirty. He was at a loss , but she solved the difficulty by saying, ' The 
Doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.' 

"A Quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked; it had a broad brim, 
and a label of paper about its neck. * What is that? ' — said she — 'my 
apothecary's son ! ' The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the 
question, set us all Si-\?i\\gh\ng." — Sivift's Works, Scott's Ed. vol. ix. 295-d 



130 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

% 
sa3^s " he has visited a lady just come to town," whose name 
somehow is not mentioned ; and in Letter VIII. he enters a 
quer}^ of Stella's — " What do you mean ' that boards near me, 
that I dine with now and then?' What the deuce ! You know 
whom I liave dined with ever}'^ da}' since I left 3'ou, better than I 
do." Of course she does. Of course Swift has not the slightest 
idea of what she means. But in a few letters more it turns 
out that the Doctor has been to dine " gravel}'" with a Mrs. 
Vanhomrigh : then that he has been to " his neighbor : " then 
that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole week 
with his neighbor ! Stella was quite right in hei* previsions. 
She saw from the very first hint, what was going to happen ; 
and scented Vanessa in the air.* The rival is at the Dean's 
feet. The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drink- 
ing tea together, and going to prayers together, and learning 
Latin together, and conjugating amo, amas, amavi together. 
The Httle language is over for poor Stella. By the rule of 
grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn't amavi come 
after amo and amas ? 

The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa t .you may peruse in 
Cadenus's own poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa's 
vehement expostulator}' verses and letters to him ; she adores 
him, implores him, admires him, thinks him something god- 
like, and onl}' pra3's to be admitted to lie at his feet.]: As the}- 

* " I am so hot and lazy after ray morning's walk, that I loitered at 
Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, where my best gown and periwig was, and out of mere list- 
lessness dine there, very often; so I did to-day." — Journal to Stella. 

Mrs. Vanhomrigh, " Vanessa's " mother, was the widow of a Dutcli 
merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William's time. The 
family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Bury Street, St. 
James's — a street made notable by such residents as Swift and Steele ; 
and, in our own time, Moore and Crabbe. 

t "Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by 
Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress ; 
impatient to be admired ; very romantic in her turn of mind ; superior, in 
her own opinion, to all her sex ; full of pertness, gayety, and pride ; not 
without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beauti- 
ful or genteel ; . . , . happy in tlie thoughts of being reported Swift's con- 
cubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife." — Lord Orrerv. 

t "You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. 
You had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your in- 
clinations so much ; or as often as you remember there was such a one in 
the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made 
uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since 
I saw you last : 1 am sure I could have borne the rack much better than 
those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die 
without seeing you more ; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not 
last long ; for tliere is something in human nature that prompts one so to 



SWIFT. 131 

are bringing him home from church, those divine feet of Dr. 
Swift's are found pretty often in Vanessa's parlor. He likes 
to be admired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be 
a woman of great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a 
fortune too. He sees her every day ; he does not tell Stella 
about the business : until the impetuous Vanessa becomes too 
fond of him, until the Doctor is quite frightened by the 30ung 
woman's ardor, and confounded by her warmth. He wanted 
to marry neither of them — that I beheve was the truth ; but 
if he had not married Stella, Vanessa would have had him in 
spite of himself. When he went back to Ireland, his Ariadne, 
not content to remain in her isle, pursued the fugitive Dean. 
In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied ; the 
news of the Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to her, 
and it killed her — she died of that passion.* 

find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, 
and speak kindly to me ; for I am sure you'd not condemn any one to 
suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to 
you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you ; for when I begin 
to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so 
awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh ! that you may have but so much re- 
gard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say 
as little as ever I can ; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it 
would move you to forgive me ; and believe I cannot help telling you this 
and live." — Vanessa. (M. 1714.) 

* " If we consider Swift's behavior, so far only as it relates to women, 
we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole 
figures." — Orrery. 

" You would have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio 
of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning till night." — 
Orrery. 

A correspondent of Sir Walter Scott's furnished him with the materials 
on which to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa — after 
she had retired to cherish her passion in retreat : — 

" Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built 
much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. 
An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account) showed the grounds 
to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and 
\ised to work with his father in the garden when a boy. He remembered 
the unfortunate Vanessa well ; and his account of her corresponded with 
the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He 
said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company : her constant amuse- 
ment was reading, or walking in the garden. . . . She avoided company, 
and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she 
seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with 
laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean 
she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. 
He showed her favorite seat, still called ' Vanessa's bower.' Three or foiur 

trees and some laurels indicate the spot There were two seats and a 

rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of 



132 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written 
beautifully regarding her, "That doesn't surprise me," said 
Mrs. Stella, " for we all know the Dean could write beautifully 
about a broomstick." A woman — a true woman ! Would 3'ou 
have had one of them forgive the other ? 

In a note in his biography-, Scott says that his friend Dr. 
Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a paper 
by Swift, on which are written, in the Dean's hand, the words : 
" Only a woma/is hair." An instance, sa^'S Scott, of the Dean's 
desire to veil his feelings under the mask of C3nical indifference. 

See the various notions of critics ! Do those w^ords indicate 
indifference or an attempt to hide feeling ? Did you ever hear 
or read four words more pathetic ? Only a woman's hair : only 
love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ; onh^ the 

the Liffey In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's 

account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit,*Avith books and writing- 
materials on the table before them." — Scott's Swijl, vol. i. pp. 246-7. 

" . . . . But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she 
found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a 
union with the object of her affections — to the hope of which she had 
clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most prob- 
able bar was his undefined connection with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must 
have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long excited her secret 
jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their 
correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him — then 
in Ireland — ' If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me 
so, except 'tis what is inconsistent wdhviine.' Her silence and patience under 
this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must liave been partly 
owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her 
rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolu- 
tion. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ven- 
tured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to 
know the nature of that connection. Stella, in reply, informed her of her 
marriage with the Dean ; and full of the highest resentment against Swift 
for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's 
inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogation, and, 
without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, 
near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those 
paroxysms of fury to wliich he was liable, both from temj)er and disease, 
rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the stern- 
ness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer 
passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could 
scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter 
on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, mounted his horse, and re- 
turned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened tlie packet, she only found her 
own letter to Stella. It was her death-warrant. She sunk at once under 
the disappointment of the delayed yet cherished hopes which had so long 
sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose 
sake she had indulged them. How long she survived this last interview is 
uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks." -— 
Scott. 



SWIFT. 133 

tenderest heart in the world stricken and wounded, and passed 
awa}^ now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, 
and pitiless desertion : — only that lock of hair left ; and mem- 
or}^ and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over 
the grave of his victim. 

And 3'et to have had so much love, he must have given 
some. Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, must 
that man have had locked up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, 
and shown fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. But 
it was not good to visit that place. People did not remain there 
long, and suffered for having been there.* He shrank away 
from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both 
died near him, and away from him. He had not heart enough 
to see them die. He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan ; 
he slunk away from his fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars 
on one's ears after sevenscore 3'ears. He was always alone — 
alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella's sweet 
smile came and shone upon him. When that went, silence and 
utter night closed over him. An immense genius : an awful 
downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that think- 
ing of him is like thinking of an empire faUing. We have 
other great names to mention — none I think, however, so great 
or so gioom3^ 

* " M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne com- 
pagnie. II n'a pas, a la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, 
la raison, le choix, le bon gout qui manquent a notre cure de Meudon. Ses 
vers sont d'un gout singulier, et presque inimitable ; la bonne plaisanterie 
est son partage en vers et en prose ; mais pour le bien entendre il faut 
faire un petit voyage dans son pays." — Voltaire : Lettres sur les Analais. 
Let. 22. 



CONGEEVE AND ADDISON. 



A GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the 
Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating- 
club, called the " Union ;" and I remember that there was a 
tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that re- 
nowned school of orator}', that the great leaders of the Opposi- 
tion and Government had their eyes upon the University De- 
bating-Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he 
ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great 
nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Thomson of 
Trinit}', would rise in their might, and draping themselves in 
their gowns, rally round the monarch}', or hurl defiance at 
priests and kings, with the majest}' of Pitt or the fire of 
Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's 
emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, 
where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. In-, 
deed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge men, 
orators of the " Union," were actuall}' caught up thence, and 
carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. 
And man}' a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University cur- 
riculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the 
parliamentary chariot. 

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of Peers and 
Members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time? Were 
they all in the army, or hunting in the* country, or boxing the 
watch? How was it that the young gentlemen from the Uni- 
versity got such a prodigious number of places ? A lad com- 
posed a neat copy of verses at Christcliurch or Trinity, in 
which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French 
king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 135 

the reverse ; and the party in power was presentl}^ to provide 
for the young poet ; and a commissionership, or a post in the 
Stamps, or the secretar3'ship of an Embass}', or a clerkship in 
the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful 
fruit-bearing rod was that of Busb3''s. What have men of 
letters got in our time? Think, not onlj' of Swift, a king fit 
to rule in an}^ time or empire — but Addison, Steele, Prior, 
Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others, 
who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of 
the public purse.* The wits of whose names we sliall treat in 
this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the King's 
coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter- 
day coming round for them. 

They all began at school or college in the regular way, pro- 
ducing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called 
odes upon public events, battles, sieges, court marriages and 
deaths, in which the gods of Ol^^mpus and the tragic muse were 
fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time 
in France and in England. " Aid us, Mars, Bacchus, Apollo," 
cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. 
'' Accowez^ chastes nymphes du Permesse^^^ says Boileau, cele- 
brating the Grand Monarch. '•'-Des sons que ma lyre enfante 
marquez en bien la cadence, et vous vents, fnites silence! je vais 
parler de Louis ! " Schoolboj's' themes and foundation exer- 
cises are the onty relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The 
Ol3an]^ians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What 

* The following is a conspectus of them : — 

Addison. — Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secre- 
tary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; Keeper of the Rec- 
ords in Ireland ; Lord of Trade ; and one of the Principal 
Secretaries of State, successively. 

Steele. — Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal 
Stables at Hampton Court ; and Governor of the Royal Com- 
pany of Comedians ; Commissioner of "Forfeited Estates in 
Scotland." 

Prior. — Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague ; Gentleman of the Bed- 
chamber to King William ; Secretary to the Embassy in 
France: Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France. 

Tickell. — Under Secretary of State ; Secretary to the Lords Justices of 
Ireland. 

Congreve. — Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches ; Commissioner 
for Wine Licenses ; place in the Pipe OflSce ; post in the 
Custom House ; Secretary of Jamaica. 

Gay. — Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Han- 
over. ) 

John Dennis. — A place in the Custom House. 

"En Angleterre . . . . les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici.''— Vol- 
taire : Letires sur les Anglais. Let. 20. 



136 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. ~ 

man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country news 
paper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the 
birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman ? 
In the past century the j^oung gentlemen of the Universities all 
exercised themselves at these queer compositions ; and some 
got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and 
many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were 
pleased to call their muses. 

William Congreve's * Pindaric Odes are still to be found in 
"Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poets'-corner, in 
which ^o many forgotten bigwigs have a niche ; but though he 
was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of an}- day, 
it was Congreve's wit and humor which first recommended him 
to courtlj^ fortune. And it is recorded that his first pla}^ the 
" Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great 
patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax — 
who, being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease 
and tranquillit}', instantly made him one of the Commissioners 
for licensing hackne3^-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a 
place in the Pipe Office, and likewise a post in the Custom 
House of the value of 600/. 

A commissionership of hackne3"-coaches — a post in the 
Custom House — a place in the Pipe Office, and all for writing 
a comedy ! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place in the 
Pipe Office? t " Ah, I'heureux temps que celui de ces fables ! " 
Men of letters there still be : but I doubt whether any Pipe 
Offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago. 

Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, 

* He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Rich, 
ard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire — a very- 
ancient family. 

t "Pipe. — Pipa, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the 
ijreat roll. ■ * 

" Pipe Office is an office in which a person called the Cleric of the Pipe 
makes out leases of Crown lands, by warrant from the Lord Treasurer, or 
Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

" Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c." — Rees : 
Cylcopced. Art. Pipe. 

" Pipe Office. — Spelman thinks so called, because the papers were kept 
in a large pipe or cask. 

" ' These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, 
which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe .... because the whole receipt 
is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills.' — 
Bacon: The Office of Alienations." 

[We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudi- 
tion. But a modern man of letters can know little on these points — by 
experience.] 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 137 

and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places 
in society ; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here 
present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers 
at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Es- 
quire, the most eminent literary "swell" of his age. In m}^ 
copy of "Johnson's Lives" Congreve's wig is the tallest, and 
put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. " I 
am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to sa}^ looking out 
from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. 
Congreve.* From the beginning of his career until the end"" 
everybody' admired him. Having got his education in Ireland, 
at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in 
the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no 
attention to the law ; but splendidl}" frequented the coffee- 
houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, 
the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious 
from the first. Ever3'bod3' acknowledged the 3'oung chieftain. 
The great Mr. Dryden f declared that he was equal to Shaks- 

* "It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in 
the least ; nor was lie ever removed from any post that was given to him, 
except to a better. His place in the Custom House, and his office of Sec- 
retary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve 
hundred a year." — Biog. Brit., J.r^' Congreve. 

t Dryden addressed his " twelfth epistle " to " My dear friend, Mr. 
Congreve," on his compdy called the " Double Dealer," in which he 
says : — 

"Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please ; 

Yet doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease. 

In differing talents both adorned their age : 

One for the study, t'other for the stage. 

But both to Congreve justly shall submit, 

One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit. 

In him all beauties of this age we see," &c. &c. 

The "Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the "Old 
Bachelor," but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen 
foul of it, our " Swell " applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in 
the "Epistle Dedicatory " to the " Right Honorable Charles Montague." 

" I was conscious," said he, " where a true critic might have put me 
upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, .... but I have not 
heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer." 

He goes on — 

" But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the 
false criticisms that are made upon me ; and that is, some of the ladies are 
offended. I am heartily sorry for it ; for I declare, I would rather dis- 
oblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are con- 
cerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How 
can I help it ? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and 
foiiieg cf human kind I should be very glad of an opportunity ta 



138 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

peare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical 
crown, and writes of him: " Mr. Congreve has done me the 
favor to review the ' jEneis,' and compare my version with 
the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this ex- 
cellent ^'oung man has showed me manv faults which I have 
endeavored to correct." 

The "excellent young man" was but three or four and 
twent}" when the great Dr3xlen thus spoke of him : the greatest 
literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, 
himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a 
school of wits, who dail3" gathered round his chair and tobacco- 
pipe at Will's. Pope dedicated his "Iliad" to him; * Swift, 
Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's rank, and lavish 
compliments upon him . Voltaire went to wait upon him as on one 
of the Representatives of Literature ; and the man who scarce 
praises any other living person — who flung abuse at Pope, and 
Swift, and Steele, and Addison — the Grub Street Timon, old 
John Dennis, t was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve ; and said 
that when he retired from the stage, Comedj^ went with him. 

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in 
the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses ; as much be- 
loved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, 
and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,| the heroine of all his plays, 
the favorite of all the town of her da}' ; and the Duchess of 

make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no 
more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon ivhen he is letting 
their blood." 

* " Instead of endeavoring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me 
leave behind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most valu- 
able men as well as finest writers of my age and country — one who has 
tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to 
do justice to Homer — and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me 
at the period of my labors. To him, therefore, having brought this long 
work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honor and 
satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve 
and of — A. Pope." — Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer. Mar. 25, 
1720. 

t " When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said he 
had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friend- 
ship for our author, and generously took him under his protection in his 
high authoritative manner." — Thos. Davies : Dramatic Miscellanies. 

X " Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and 
lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance 
with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. 
The Duchess showed me a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used after- 
wards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with 
the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to 
have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle." — Dr. Young. Spence's Anerdotps. 



COXGREVE AND ADDISON. 139 

Marlborough, Marlborough's daughter, had such an admiration 
of him, that when he died she had an ivor}' figure made to imi- 
tate him,* and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed 
just as the great Congreve's gout}' feet were dressed in his great 
lifetime. lie saved some mone}- b}' his Pipe Office, and his 
Custom House office, and his Hackne}- Coach office, and nobly 
left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it,t but to the Duchess 
of Marlborough, who didn't. | 

How can I introduce to you that merr^^ and shameless Comic 
Muse who won him such a reputation ? Nell Gwj'nn's servant 
fought the other footman for having called his mistress a bad 
name ; and in like manner, and with prett^^ like epithets, Jerem}' 
Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the English 
comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's man's 
fellow-servants called Nell Gw3^nn's man's mistress. The ser- 
vants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,§ and others, defended 

4 

* " A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to 
bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it." — 
Thos. Davies : Dramatic Miscellanies. 

t The sum Congreve left Mrs. Bracegirdle was 200/., as is said in the 
" Dramatic Miscellanies " of Tom Davies ; where are some particulars 
about this charming actress and beautiful woman. 

» She had a " lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Gibber, and 
" such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired 
everybody with desire." " Scarce an audience saw her that were not half 
of them her lovers." 

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. " In 
Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla . . . ; Con- 
greve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in ' Love 
for Love;' in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the 'Mourning Bride; 'and, 
lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the ' AVay of the World.' 
Mirabel, the fine gentleman of tlie play, is, I believe, not very distant from 
the real character of Congreve." — Dramatic MisceUanies, vol. iii. 1784. 

She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public 
favorite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age. 

t Johnson calls his legacy the " accumulation of attentive parsimony, 
which," he continues, "though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, 
might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he 
descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to 
difficulties and distress." — Lives of the Poets. 

§ He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called " Amendments of Mr. 
Collier's False and Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are sub- 
joined : — 

" The greater part of these examples which he has produced are only 
demonstrations of his own impurity : they only savor of his utterance, and 
were sweet enough till tainted by his breath. 

•* Where the expression is unblamable in its own pure and genuine 
signification, he enters into it, himself, like tlie evil spirit; he possesses the 
innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth liis own blasphemies. 

" If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I 



140 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

themselves with the same success, and for the same cause which 
set Nell's lacke3^ fighting. She was a disreputable, daring, 
laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. She 
came over from the Continent with Charles (who chose many 
more of his female friends there) at the Restoration — a wild, 
dishevelled Lais, with e3^es bright with wit and wine — a saucy 
court- favorite that sat at the King's knees, and laughed in his 
face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her chariot- 
window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of 
the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular 
enough, that daring Corned}', that audacious poor Nell : she was 
ga}^ and generous, kind, frank, as such people can afford to be : 
and the men who lived with her and laughed with her, took her 
pay and drank her wine, turned out when the Puritans hooted 
her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was indefensible, 
and it is prett}^ certain her servants knew it. 

There is life and death going on in everj'thing : truth and 
lies alwa3^s at battle. Pleasure is alwa3's warring against self- 
restraint. Doubt is alwaj's crying Psha ! and sneering. A 
man in life, a humorist, in writing about life, s^ays over to one 
principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right 
and tlie love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the 
other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious busine«s 
to Harlequin ? I have read two or three of Congreve's plays over 
before speaking of him ; and my feelings were rather like those, 
which I dare sa}^, most of us here have had, at Pompeii, look- 
ing at Sallust's house, and the relics of an orgy : a dried wine- 
jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing-girl * 
pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester : a per- 
fect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his moral, and 
the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve Muse 
is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at 
the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its 
mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and 
daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desire, with which that 
empty bowl once fermented. We think of the glances that 
allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in 

am not very well versed in his nomenclatures. ... I will only call him 
Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it. 
" The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour critic." 
" Congreve," says Dr. Johnson, '' a very young man, elated with suc- 
cess, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. 
. . . The dispute was protracted through ten years ; but at last Comedy 
grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labors in the 
reformation of the theatre." — Life of Congreve. - 



CONGREVE AKD ADDISON. 141 

those vacant sockets ; and of lips whispering love, and cheeks 
dimpling with smiles, that once covered 3'on ghastly 3^ellow 
framework. They used to call those teeth pearls once. See ! 
there's the cup she drank from, the gold chain she wore on her 
neck, the vase which held the rouge for her cheeks, her looking- 
glass, and the harp she used to dance to. Instead of a feast we 
find a gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few bones ! 

Reading in these plays now, is like shutting your ears and 
looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, 
the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the cavalier 
seul advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and men twirl- 
ing round at the end in a mad galop, after whi(;h everj'bod}' 
bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we 
can't understand that comic dance of the last centurv — its 
strange gravity and ga3'ety, its decorum or its indecorum. It 
has a jargon of its own quite unlike life ; a sort of moral of its 
own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a Heathen myster}^ 
symbolizing a Pagan doctrine ; protesting — as the Pompeians 
very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at 
their games ; as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses 
protested, crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands — 
against the new, hard, ascetic pleasure-hating doctrine whose 
gaunt disciples, lately' passed over from the Asian shores of 
the Mediterranean, were for breaking the fair images of Venus 
and flinging the altars of Bacchus down. 

I fancy poor Congreve's theatre is a temple of Pagan de- 
lights, and m3'steries not permitted except among heathens. I 
fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, 
as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple 
to temple. When the libertine hero carries off" the beautj^ in 
the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the 
young wife ; in tlie ballad, when the poet bids his mistress to 
gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still 
a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phiflis 
under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her 
over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is oppor- 
tunely asleep ; and when seduced by the invitations of the rosy 
youth she comes forward to the footlights, and they perform on 
each other's tiptoes that pas which 3'ou all know, and which is 
only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at 
the pasteboard chalet (whither he returns to take another nap 
in case the 3^oung people get an encore) : when Harlequin, 
splendid in youth, stiength, and agility, arrayed in gold and a 
thousand colors, springs over the heads of countless perils, 



142 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and, dauntless and 
splendid, dances danger down : when Mr. Punch, that godless 
old rebel, breaks ever}' law and laughs at it with odious triumph, 
outwits his law^'er, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the 
head, and hangs the hangman — don't 3'ou see in the corned}', 
in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet- 
show — the Pagan protest? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in 
its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk 
and hold each other's hands and whisper ! Sings the chorus — 
" There is nothing like love, there is nothing like 3'outh, there 
is nothing like beauty of your spring-time. Look ! how old 
age tries to meddle with merry sport ! Beat him with his own 
crutch, the wrinkled old dotard ! There is nothing like 3'outh, 
there is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength. 
Strength and valor win beaut}" and 3"outh. Be brave and con- 
quer. Be 3'oung and happ3'. Enjo3% enjo3', enjoy ! Would 
3'ou know the Segreto per esserfeNce? Here it is, in a smiling 
mistress, and a cup of Falernian." As the boy tosses the cup 
and sings his song — hark ! what is that chant coming nearer 
and nearer ? What is that dirge which will disturb us ? The 
lights of the festival burn dim — the cheeks turn pale — the 
voice quavers — and the cup drops on the floor. Who's there ? 
Death and Fate are at the gate, and the3' ivill come in. 

Congreve's comic feast flares with lights, and round the 
table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging 
the wildest jests and ribaldr3^, sit men and w^omen, waited on 
b3' rascall3' valets and attendants as dissolute as their mis- 
tresses — perhaps the ver3'^ worst company in the world. There 
doesn't seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table 
sits Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and 
waited on b3' English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their 
calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer ever3' where. Like 
the heroes of the chivalry stor3", whose long-winded loves and 
combats the3" were sending out of fashion, the3' are alwa3'S 
splendid and triumphant — overcome all dangers, vanquish all 
enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, 
usurers are the foes these champions contend with. The3' are 
merciless in old age, invariabl3', and an old man pla3"s the part 
in the dramas which the wicked enchanter or the great blun- 
dering giant performs in the chivalry tales, who threatens and 
grumbles and resists — a huge stupid obstacle alwa3"s overcome 
133^ the knight. It is an old man with a money-box : Sir Belmour 
his son or nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is 
an old man with a young wife whom he locks up : Sir Mirabel 



CONGEEVE AND ADDISON. 143 

robs him of his wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the 
old hunks. The old fool, what business has he to hoard his 
money, or to lock up blushing eighteen? Money is for 3'outh, 
love is for 3'outh, awa}^ with the old people. When Millamant 
is sixt}^ having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and 
married his friend Doricourt's granddaughter out of the nursery 

— it will be his turn ; and 3'oung Belmour will make a fool 
of him. All this pretty morality 3^ou have in the comedies of 
William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners 
as he observes, he observes with great humor ; but ah ! it's a 
weary feast, that banquet of wit where no love is. It palls very 
soon ; sad indigestions follow it and lonety blank headaches in 
the morning. 

I can't pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Congreve'a 
pla3'S * — which are undeniabl3^ bright, witt3", and daring — any 

* The scene of Valentine's pretended madness in " Love for Love " is a 
iplendid specimen of Congreve's daring manner : — 

" Scandal. — And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon 
him? 

" Jeremy. — Yes, sir ; he says he'll favor it, and mistake her for Angelica. 

" Scandal. — It may make us sport. 

** Foresight. — Mercy on us ! 

" Valentine. — Husht — interrupt me not — I'll whisper predictions to 
thee, and thou shalt prophesie ; — I am truth, and can teach thy tongue 
a, new trick, — I have told thee what's past — now I'll tell what's to 
come : — Dost thou know what will happen to-morrow ? Answer me not 

— for I will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro' craft, and fools 
thro' fortune ; and honesty will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer suit. 
Ask me questions concerning to-morrow. 

" Scandal. — Ask him, Mr. Foresight. 

*' Foi'esight. — Pray what will be done at Court ? 

" Valentine. — Scandal will tell you ; — I am truth, I never come there. 

" Foresight. — In the city ? 

" Valentine. — Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual 
hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters as if religion 
were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, 
the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Ex- 
change at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care 
and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full 
of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt 'prentice that sweeps his mas- 
ter's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. 
But there are two things, that you will see very strange ; which are, wan- 
ton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about 
their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further ; you look 
suspiciously. Are you a husband ? 

" Foresight. — I am married. 

" Valentine. — Poor creature ! Is your wife of Covent-garden Parish f 

*' Foresight. — No ; St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. 

" Valentine. — Alas, poor man ! his eyes are sunk, and his hands shriv- 
elled ; his legs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray for a metamor- 



144 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

more than I could ask you to hear the dialogue of a witty 
bargeman and a brilliant fishwoman exchanging compliments 

phosis — change thy shape, and shake off age ; get thee Medea's kettle and 
be boiled anew ; come forth with lab'ring callous hands, and chine of steel, 
and Atlas' shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chair- 
men, and make thee pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in 
the face. Ha, ha, ha ! That a man should have a stomach to a wedding- 
supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet ! Ha, ha, ha ! 

" Foresight. — His frenzy is very high now, M?: Scandal. 

"Scandal. — I believe it is a spring-tide. 

"Foresight. — Very likely — truly; you understand these matters. Mr. 
Scandal, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has 
uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical. 

" Valentine. — Oh ! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long "* 

" Jeremy. — She's here, Sir. 

" Mrs. Foresight. — Now, Sister ! 

" Mrs. Frail. — Lord ! what must I say ? 

" Scandal. — Humor him. Madam, by all means. 

" Valentine. — Where is she ? Oh ! I see her : she comes like Riches, 
Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned 
wretch. Oli — welcome, welcome ! 

" Mrs. Frail. — How d'ye, Sir 1 Can I serve you 1 

" Valentine. — Hark'ee — I have a secret to tell you. Endymion and the 
moon shall meet us on Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of 
night. But say not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark Ian- 
thorn, that it may be secret ; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy- 
water, that he may fold his ogling tail ; and Argus's hundred eyes be shut 
— ha ! Nobody shall know, but Jeremy. 

" Mrs. Frail. — No, no ; we'll keep it secret ; it shall be done presently. 

" Valentine. — The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither — closer — 
that none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news : Angelica is turned 
nun, and I am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the 
Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part ; for she'll meet 
me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the pro- 
ject, and we won't see one another's faces till we have done something to 
be ashamed of, and then we'll blush once for all. . . . 

Enter Tattle. 

" Tattle.— Do you know me, Valentine? 
" Valentine. — You ! — who are you ? No, I hope not 
" Tattle. — I am Jack Tattle, your friend. 

" Valentine. — My friend ! What to do ? I am no married man, an(3 
jthou canst not lye with my wife ; I am very poor, and thou canst not bor- 
row money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend ? 

" Tattle. — Hah ! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a 

secret. 

" Angelica. — Do you know me, Valentine ? 

" Valentine. — Oh, very well. 

" Angelica. — Who am 11 • 

♦' Valentine. — You're a woman, one to whom Heaven gave beauty when 
it grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond ; 
and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white— a sheet of spotless 
paper — when you first are born ; but you are to be scrawled and blotted 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 145 

s»,t Billingsgate ; but some of his verses — they were amongst 
tlie most famous lyrics of the time, and pronounced equal to 

by every goose's quill. I know you ; for I loved a woman, and loved 
her so long that I found out a strange thing: I found out what a woman 
was good for. 

" Tattle. — Ay ! pr'ythee, what's that ? 

" Valentine. — Why, to keep a secret. 

" Tattle. — Lord ! 

" Valentine. — Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she 
should tell, yet she is not to be believed. 

" Tattle. — Hah ! Good again, faith. 

" Valentine — I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like." — 
CoNGREVE : Love for Love. 

There is a Mrs. Nicklebt/, of the year 1700, in Congreve's Comedy of 
"" The Double Dealer," in whose character the author introduces some won- 
derful traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the gallants of the 
play, and no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above 
quoted could resist Congreve. 

"Lady Plyant. — Oh ! reflect upon the horror of your conduct ! Offer- 
ing to pervert me" [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for 
her daughter's hand, not for her own] — "perverting me from the road of 
virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip — not one 
faux pas. Oh, consider it: what would you have to answer for, if you 
should provoke me to frailty ! Alas ! humanity is feeble, heaven knows ! 
Very feeble, and unable to support itself. 

" Mellefont. — Where am I '* Is it day ? and am I awake ? Madam — 

" Lady Plyant. — O Lord, ask me the question ! I'll swear I'll deny it — 
therefore don't ask rae ; nay, you shan't ask me, I swear I'll deny it. O 
Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face ; I warrant I am 
as red as a turkey-cock. O fie, cousin Mellefont ! 

" Mellefont. — Nay, Madam, hear me ; I mean — 

" Lad>/ Plyant. — Hear you 1 No, no ; I'll deny you first, and hear you 
afterwards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon 
hearing — hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I 
won't trust my honor, I assure you; my honor is infallible and uncomat- 
able. 

"Mellefont. — For heaven's sake,JMadara — 

" Lady Plyant. — Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of 
heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart ? May be, you don't 
think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin ; but 
still, my honor, if it were no sin — But then, to marry my daughter for 
the convenience of frequent opportunities — I'll never consent to that: as 
sure as can be, I'll break the match. 

"Mellefont. — Death and amazement! Madam, upon my knees — 

" Lady Plyant. — Nay, nay, rise up ! come, you shall see my good-na- 
ture. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not 
your fault; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have 
charms ? And how can you help it, if you are made a captive 1 I swear 
it is pity it should be a fault ; but, my honor. Well, but your honor, too — 
but the sin ! Well, but the necessity. O Lord, here's somebody coming. I 
dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime ; and strive as much 
as can be against it — strive, be sure; but don't be roelancholick — don't 

10 



146 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Horace by his contemporaries — may give an idea of his power, 
of his grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in com- 
pliment, and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was 
so accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor opinion of his 
victims. Nothing's new except their faces, saj-s he; "every 
woman is the same." He says this in his first comedy, which 
he wrote languidly* in illness, when he was an "excellent 
3'oung man." Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a 
more excellent thing. 

When he advances to make one of his conquests, it is with 
a splendid gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles play- 
ing, like Grammont's French dandies attacking the breach of 
Lerida. 

" Cease, cease to ask her name," he writes of a 3'oung lady 
at the Wells at Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent 
compliment — 

" Cease, cease to ask her name, 
The crowned Muse's noblest theme, 
Whose glory by immortal fame 

Shall only sounded be. 
But if you long to know, 
Then look round yonder dazzling row •; 
Who most does like an angel show. 

You may be sure 'tis she." 

Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so 
well pleased at the poet's manner of celebrating her — 

" When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair, 
With eyes so bright and with that awful air, 
I thought my heart which durst so high aspire 
As bold as his who snatched celestial fire. 

" But soon as e'er the beauteous idiot spoke. 
Forth from her coral lips such folly broke : 
Like balm the trickling nonsense heal'd my wound, 
And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound." 

despair; but never think that I'll grant you anything. O Lord, no ; but be 
sure you lay aside all thoughts of the marriage, for though I know you 
don't love Cynthia, only as a blind to your passion for me — yet it will 
make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say ? Jealous! No, no, I can't be 
jealous ; for I must not love you. Therefore, don't hope ; but don't de- 
spair neither. Oh, they're coming; I must fly." — The Double Dealer' : Act 2, 
sc. V. page 156. 

* " There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to 
have done everything by chance. The ' Old Bachelor ' was written for 
amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed 
with great elaborateness of dialogue and incessant ambition of wit." — 
Johnson : Lives of the Poets. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 147 

Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the 
poet does not seem to respect one much more than the other ; 
and described both with exquisite satirical humor — 

" Fair Amoret is gone astray : 

Pursue and seek her every lover. 
I'll tell the signs by which you may 
The wandering shepherdess discover. 

''^Coquet and coy at once her air, 

Both studied, though both seem neglected-; 
Careless she is with artful care, 
Affecting to seem unaffected. 

" With skill her eyes dart every glance, 

Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect them ; 
For she'd persuade they wound by chance, 
Though certain aim and art direct them. 

" She likes herself, yet others hates 

For that which in herself she prizes ; 
And, while she laughs at them, forgets 
She is the thing that she despises." 

What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of 
ridicule upon her ? Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr. 
Congreve? Could anj-bod}'? Could Sabina, when she woke 
and heard such a bard singing under her window? " See," he 
writes — 

" See ! see, she wakes — Sabina wakes ! 
And now the sun begins to rise 1 
Less glorious is the morn, that breaks 

From his bright beams, than her fair eyes. 
With light united, day they give ; 

But different fates ere night fulfil : 
How many by his warmth will live ! 
How many will her coldness kill ! " 

Are you melted ? Don't you think him a divine man ? If 
not touched by the brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda : — 

"Pious Selinda goes to prayers. 

If I but ask the favor ; 
And yet the tender fool's in tears, 

When she believes I'll leave her : 
Would I were free from this restraint. 

Or else had hopes to win her : 
Would she could make of me a saint, 

Or I of her a sinner ! " 

What a conquering air there is about these! What an 
irresistible Mr. Congreve it is ! Sinner ! of course he will be a 



148 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

sinner, the delightful rascal ! Win her ! of course he will win 
her, the victorious rogue ! He knows he will : he must — with 
such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a splendid em- 
broidered suit. You see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously 
turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled 
periwig, and delivering a kiUing ogle along with his scented billet. 
And Sabina ? What a comparison that is between the nymph and ^, 
the sun ! The sun gives Sabina the /?«s, and does not venture 
to rise before her ladj'ship : the morn's bright beams are less 
glorious than her fair eyes: but before night ever3^bod3" will be 
frozen by her glances : everybody but one lucky rogue who shall 
be nameless. Louis Quatorze in all his glory is hardlj' more 
splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring 
Gardens.* 

When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter 
rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this 
perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong. t A touch of 
Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery ; a flash of Swift's 
lightning, a beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry 
pla3^house taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he 
was undoubtedly a pretty fellow. J 

* " Among those by whom it (' Will's ') was frequented, Southerne and 
Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship. . . . But 
Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden's 
friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated 
' Old Bachelor ' being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, 
after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the 
author with the high and just commendation, that it was the best first 
play he had ever seen." — Scott's Dryden, vol. i. p. 370. 

t It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that 
Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life. 

The anecdote relating to his saying that he wished " to be visited on no 
other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and sim- 
plicity," is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears 
in the English version of Voltaire's " Letters concerning the English 
Nation," published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's " Memoir of 
Voltaire." But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text 
of the same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's " CEuvres Completes " in 
the " Pantheon Litteraire." Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.) 

"Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porte le plus loin la gloire du theatre 
comique est feu M. Congreve. II n'a fait que peu de pieces, mais toutes 
sont excellentes dans leur genre. . . . Vous y voyez partout le langage des 
honnetes gens avec des actions de fripon ; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait 
bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie." 
— Voltaire : Lettres sur les Anglais. Let. 19. 

J On the death of Queen Mary he publislied a Pastoral — " The 
Mourning Muse of Alexis." Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the 
orthodox way. The Queen is called Pastora. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 149 

We have seen in Swift a humorous philosopher, whose truth 
frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We 

" I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn, 
And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn/' 

says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that — 

" With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound, 
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground " — 

(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period)i 
... It continues — 

" Lord of these woods and wide extended plains, 
Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face, 
Scalding with tears the already faded grass. 

• • • • • 

To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come 1 
And must Pastora moulder in the tomb 1 
Ah Death ! more fierce and unrelenting far 
Than wildest wolves or savage tigers are ; 
With lambs and sheep their hvmgers are appeased. 
But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized." 

This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess 
— that figure of the " Great Shepherd " lying speechless on his stomach, in 
a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit — are 
to be remembered in poetry surely : and this style was admired in its time 
by the admirers of the great Congreve ! 

In the " Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas " (the young Lord Blandford, 
the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah 
Duchess ! 

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come into 
work here again. At the sight of her grief — 

" Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego, 
And dumb distress and new compassion show. 
Nature herself attentive silence kept. 
And motion seemed suspended while she wept ! " 

And Pope dedicated the " Iliad " to the author of these lines — and Dryden 
wrote to him in his great hand : 

"Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, 
But Genius must be born and never can be taught. 
This is your portion, this your native store ; 
Heaven, that but once was prodigal before. 
To Shakspeare gave as much she could not give him more. 

Maintain your Post : that's all the fame you need, 
For 'tis impossible you should proceed ; 
Already I am worn witli cares and age. 
And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage : 
Un profitably kept at Heaven's expence, 
I live a Rent-charge upon Providence : 
But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn. 
Whom I foresee to better fortune born. 



150 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

have had in Congreve a humorous observer of another school, 
to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose 
ghastl}' doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be 
merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) 
when the time comes. We come now to a humor that flows 
from quite a different heart and spirit — a wit that makes us 
laugh, and leaves us good and happj'^ ; to one of the kindest 
benefactors that societj' has ever had 'y and I believe 3'ou have 
.divined already that I am about to mention Addison's honored 
name. 

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we 
have of him, amongst which the famous article in the Ediiihurgh 
Review * may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer 
and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvel- 
lous skill and genius of one of the most illustrious artists of our 
own ; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance — 
those chiselled features pure and cold, I can't but fancy that 
this great man — in this respect, like him of whom we spoke in 

Be kind to my remains, and oh ! defend 
Against ^our Judgment your departed Friend ! 
Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue ; 
But shade those Lawrels wliich descend to You : 
And take for Tribute what these Lines express ; 
You merit more, nor could my Love do less." 

This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In 
Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when 
gentlemen meet they fall into each other's arms, with "Jack, Jack, I must 
buss thee;" or, "Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad." And in a 
similar manner the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentlemen do 
not kiss now ; I wonder if they love each other better ? 

Steele calls Congreve " Great Sir " and " Great Author ; " says " Well- 
dressed barbarians knew his awful name," and addresses him as if he were 
a prince ; and speaks of " Pastora " as one of the most famous tragic com- 
positions. 

* " To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like 
affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been 
sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. . . . After full 
inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he de- 
served as much love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our 
infirm and erring race." — Macaulat. 

" Many who praise virtue do no more thgin praise it. Yet it is reason- 
able to believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great 
variance ; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was 
passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made 
him formidable, the character given him by his friends was never contra- 
dicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion united him, 
he had not only the esteem but the kindness ; and of others, whom the 
violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the love, 
he retained the reverence." — Johnson. 




MILTON, 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 151 

the last lecture — was also one of the lonely ones of the world. 
Such men have ver}' few equals, and they don't herd with those. 
It is in the nature of such lords of intellect to be solitary — they 
are in the world but not of it ; and our minor struggles, brawls, 
successes, pass under them. 

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried bej'ond 
easy endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were 
his family, and his society was in public ; admirably wiser, 
wittier, calmer, and more instructed than almost every man 
with whom he met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, 
feel much ? I may expect a child to admire me for being taller 
or writing more cleverly than she ; but how can I ask my supe- 
rior to say that I am a wonder when he knows better than I ? 
In Addison's da3's j'^ou could scarcely show him a literary per- 
formance, a sermon or a poem, or a piece of literary criticism, 
but he felt he could do better. His justice must have made 
him indifferent. He didn't praise, because he measured his 
compeers by a higher standard than common people have.* 
How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest 
genius ? He must have stooped to put himself on a level with 
most men. By that profusion of graciousness and smiles with 
which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every liter- 
ar}^ beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his 
court and went away channed from the great king's audience, 
and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary 
majesty had paid him — each of the two good-natured poten- 
tates of letters brought their star and ribbon into discredit. 
Everybody had his majestj-'s orders. Everybody had his 
majesty's cheap portrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds 
worth twopence apiece. A very great and just and wise man 
ought not to praise indiscriminately, but giv^e his idea of the 
truth. Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Pinkethman : Ad- 
dison praises the ingenious Mr. Doggett, the actor, whose 
benefit is coming off that night : Addison praises Don Saltero : 
Addison praises Milton with all his heart, bends his knee and 
frankly paj's homage to that imperial genius. f But between 

* " Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had some- 
thing more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other 
man ; but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, 
lie seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence." — 
Pope. Spencers Anecdotes. 

t " Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence, lies 
in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the moderns, who 
rival him in every other part of poetry ; but in the greatness of his senti- 
ments he triumphs over all the poets, both modern and ancient. Homer onlj 



152 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

those degrees of his men his praise is ver}? scanty. I don't 
think the great Mr. Addison liked 3'oung Mr. Pope, the Papist, 
much ; I don't tliink he abused him. But when Mr. Addison's 
men abused Mr. Pope, I don't think Addison took his pipe out 
of his mouth to contradict them.* 

Addison's father was a clergjman of good repute in Wilt- 
shire, aud rose in the church. f His famous son never lost his 
clerical training and scholastic gravit}', and was called " a par- 
son in a tye-wig " J in London afterwards at a time when tye- 
wigs were onlj' worn by the lait3^, and the fathers of theology 
did not think it decent to appear except in a full bottom. 
Having been at school at Salisbur}^, and the Charterhouse, in 
1687, when he was fifteen 3'ears old, he went to Queen's Col- 
lege, Oxford, where he speedil}'' began to distinguish himself 
b}' the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful 

excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to distend itself with 
greater ideas than those wliich he has laid together in his first, second, and 
sixth books." — Spectator, No. 279. 

" If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of 
working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one." — Ibid. No. 417. 

These famous papers appeared in each Saturday's Spectator, from Jan- 
uary 19th to May 3rd, 1712. Beside his services to Milton, we may place 
tliose he did to Sacred Music. 

* " Addison was very kind to rae at first, but my bitter enemy after- 
wards." — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

" ' Leave him as soon as you can,' said Addison to me, speaking of 
l*ope ; ' he will certainly play you some devilish trick else : he has an ap- 
petite to satire.'" — Lady Wortley Montagu. Spence's Anecdotes. 

t Lancelot Addison, his fatlier, was the son of another Lancelot Addi- 
son, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and 
Archdeacon of Coventry. 

f " The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening 
in his company, declared that he was ' a parson in a tye-wig,' can detract 
little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and was 
not incited to unconmion freedom by a character like that of Mandeville." 
— Johnson : Lives of the Poets. 

" Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison : he had a quarrel with 
liim, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him 
— ' One day or other you'll see that man a bishop — I'm sure he looks that 
way; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his heart.'" — Pope. 
Spence's Anecdotes. 

" Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early 
as between two and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till between 
eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative whilst here, 
and often thoughtful : sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into 
his room and stayed five minutes there before he lias known anything of 
it. He had his masters generally at supper with him; kept very little 
company beside ; and had no amour that I know of ; and I think I should 
have known it if he had had any." — Abbe Philippeaux of Blois. 
»S/w/cc's Anecdotes. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 153 

poem of " The Pigmies and the Cranes," is still read b}' lovers 
of that sort of exercise ; and verses are extant in honor of 
King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's 
custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyseus : 
many more works are in the Collection, including one on the 
Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague 
got him a pension of 300/. a year, on which Addison set out on 
his travels. 

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued 
himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at 
his fingers' ends when he travelled in Italy.* His patron went 
out of office, and his pension was unpaid : and hearing that this 
great scholar, now eminent and known to the literati of Europe 
(the great Boileau,t upon perusal of Mr. Addison's elegant 
hexameters, was first made aware that England was not alto- 
gether a barbarous nation) — hearing that the celebrated Mr. 
Addison, of Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a young 
gentleman on the grand tour, the great Duke of Somerset pro- 
posed to Mr. Addison to accompanj' his son. Lord Hartford. 

Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his Grace, and 
his lordship his Grace's son, and expressed himself ready to 
set forth. 

His Grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of 
the most famous scholars of Oxford and Europe that it was his 
gracious intention to allow my Lord Hartford's tutor one hun- 
dred guineas per annum. Mr. Addison wrote back that his 
services were his Grace's, but he by no means found his ac- 
count in the recompense for them. The negotiation was broken 
ofJL. They parted with a profusion of congees on one side and 
the other. 

Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best 
society of Europe. How could he do otherwise? He must 
have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw : at 
all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm. J 

* " His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down 
to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound." — Ma- 

CAULAY. 

t " Our country owes it to liim, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first 
conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing tlie 
present he made him of the 'Musae Anglicanae.' " — Tickell: Preface to 
Addison's Works. 

J "It was my fate to be much with the wits ; my father was acquainted 
with all of them. Addison was the best company in the world. I never knew 
anybody that had so much wit as Congreve."-^LADY Woktley Montagu. 
Spence's Anecdotes. 



154 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

He could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He 
might have omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not 
have had many faults committed for which he need blush or 
turn pale. When warmed into confidence, his conversation 
appears to have been so delightful that the greatest wits sat 
rapt and charmed to listen to him. No man bore poverty and 
narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerfulness. His letters to 
his friends at this period of his life, when he had lost his Gov- 
ernment pension and given up his college chances, are full of 
courage and a ga}^ confidence and philosoph}' : and they are 
none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last 
and greatest biographer (though Mr. Macaula}^ is bound to own 
and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and 
good Joseph Addison notoriously^ possessed, in common with 
countless gentlemen of his time) , because some of the letters 
are written when his honest hand was shaking a little in the 
morning after libations to purple L^^seus over-night. He was 
fond of drinking the healths of his friends : he writes to 
Wyche,* of Hamburg, gratefully remembering Wyche's "hoc." 
" I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard 
Shirley," he writes to Bathurst. " I have latel}^ had the honor 

* Mr. Addison to Mr. Wyche. 

"Dear Sir, — My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for 
a letter, so the properest use I can put it to is to thank y« honest gentle- 
man that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in 
my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could 
I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped 
for y« present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my 
talent at crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be im- 
possible for me to express y« deep sense I have of y« many favors you 
have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the 
pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends 
wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought 
a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your com- 
pany made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all 
y* satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. 
If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long- 
lived as Methuselah, or, to use a more familiar instance, as y^ oldest hoc in 
y^ cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us are 
by this time come to their shapes again. I can't forbear troubling you with 
my hearty respects to y^ owners of them, and desiring you to believe me 
always, 

• "Dear Sir, 

" Yours,'* &c. 
" To Mr. Wtche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg, 

" May, 1703." 

From, the Life of Addison, by Miss Aikin. Vol. i. p. 147. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON". 155 

to meet m}^ Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have 
drunk Mr. Wood's health a hundred times in excellent cham- 
pagne," he writes again. Swift* describes him over his cups, 
when Joseph jielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. 
Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of 
wine to warm his blood. If he was a parson,, he wore a tj'e- 
wig, recollect. A better and more Christian man scarcely ever 
breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weak- 
ness for wine — why, we could scarcely have found a fault with 
him, and could not have liked him as we do.f 

At thirty-three j^ears of age, this most distinguished wit, 
scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an in- 
come. His book of "Travels" had failed: hi& "Dialogues 
on Medals " had no particular success : his Latin verses, even 
though reported the best since Virgil, or Statins at any rate, 
had not brought him a Government place, and Addison was 
living up three shabby pair of stairs in the Ha3^market (in a 
poverty over which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when 
in these shabby rooms an emissary from Government and For- 

* It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Ad- 
dison was, on the whole, satisfactory from first to last. The value of Swift's 
testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judg- 
ment, can be doubted by nobody. 

" Sept. 10, 1710. — I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele. 

" 11. — Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with 
him part of this evening. 

" 18. — To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retirement 
near Chelsea I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison. 

** 27. — To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland's, with Steele 
and Addison, too. 

" 29. — I dined with Mr. Addison," &c. — Journal to Stella. 

Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels " To Dr. Jona- 
than Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the great- 
est genius of his age." — (Scott. From the information of Mr. Theophi- 
lus Swift.) 

" Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person ; 
and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him 
right in his notions of persons and things." — Letters. 

" I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you 
now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have 
nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself." — Swift to Addi- 
son (1717). Scott's .Sjw/?. Vol. xix. p. 274. 

Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communica- 
tions. Time renewed them : and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a 
legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honorably connected. 

t "Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at 
Button's ; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into 
the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much 
for me : it hurt my health, and so I quitted it." — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 



156 EXGLISII HUMORISTS. 

tune came and found him.* A poem was wanted about the 
Duke of Marlborough's victorj'^ of Blenheim. Would Mr. 
Addison write one? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, 
took back the repl}^ to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. 
Addison would. When the poem had reached a certain stage, 
it was carried to Godolphin ; and the last lines which he read 
were these : — 

" But, O my Muse ! what numbers wilt thou find 
To sing the furious troops in battle join'd ? 
Metliinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound 
The victor's shouts and dying groans confound ; 
The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, 
And all the thunder of the battle rise. 
'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved, 
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, 
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair. 
Examined all the dreadful scenes of war : 
In peaceful tliought the field of death surveyed, 
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid. 
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage. 
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. 
So when an angel, by divine command. 
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land 
(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed), 
Calm and serene -he drives the furious blast ; 
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 

Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pro- 
nounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetr3\ That 
angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed 
him in the place of Commissioner of Appeals — vice Mr. Locke 
providentially promoted. In the following 3'ear Mr. Addison 
went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was 
made Under Secretary of State. O angel visits ! 3'ou come 
" few and far between " to literar}' gentlemen's lodgings ! Your 
wings seldom quiver at second-floor windows now ! 

You laugh? You think it is in the power of few writers 
now-a-days to call up such an angel? Well, perhaps not; 
but permit us to comfort ourselves by pointing out that there 
are in the poem of the "Campaign" some as bad lines as 
heart can desire : and to hint that Mr. Addison did vejy 
wiselj' in not going further with my Lord Godolphin than that 

* " When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appear- 
ance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, 
he found his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at 
full leisure for the cultivation of his mind." — Johnson : Lives of the Poets. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 157 

angelical simile. Do allow me, just for a little harmless mis- 
chief, to read you some of the lines which follow. Here is the 
interview between the Duke and the King of the Romans after 
the battle : — 

"Austria's young monarch, whose imperial sway 
Sceptres and tlu'ones are destuied to obey, 
Whose boasted ancestry so high extends 
That in the Pagan Gods liis lineage ends, 
Comes from afar, in gratitude to own 
The great supporter of his father's throne. 
What tides of glory to his bosom ran 
Clasped in tli' embraces of the godlike man ! 
How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt. 
To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt ! 
Such easy greatness, such a graceful port, 
So turned and finished for the camp or court ! " 

How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison's school of 
Charterhouse could write as well as that now? The "Cam- 
paign " Ims blunders, triumphant as it was ; and weak points 
like all campaigns.* 

In the year 1713 "Cato" came out. Swift has left a de- 
scription of the first night of the performance. All the laurels 
of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this pro- 
digious poem.f Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular 

* " Mr. Addison wrote very fluently ; but he was sometimes very slow 
and scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends ; 
and would alter almost everything that any of them liinted at as wrong. 
He seemed to be too difl[ident of himself ; and too much concerned about 
his character as a poet ; or (as he worded it) too solicitous for that kind of 
praise which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all!" — Pope. 
S pence's Anecdotes. 

t " As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, " I am content at present 

to be a bare looker-on Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome 

in his days, as he is of Britain in ours ; and though all the foolish industry 
possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author 
once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him 
on this occasion : 

" ' Envy itself is dumb — in wonder lost ; 

And factions strive who shall applaud him most.' 

" The numerous and violent claps of the Wliig party on the one side of 
the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other ; while the author 
sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding 

more from the hand than the head I believe you have heard that, 

after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent 
for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty 
guineas in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of 
liberty so well against a perpetual^ dictator." — Pope's Letters to Sir W. 
Trumbull. 



158 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

ovations, complimentary garlands from literar}'' men, transla- 
tions in all languages, delight and homage from all — save 
from John Dennis in a minorit}'^ of one. Mr. Addison was 
called the "great Mr. Addison" aftei* this. The Coifee-house 
Senate saluted him Divus : it was heresy to question that 
decree. 

Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in 
the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He 
was appointed Secretary of State in 1717. And letters of his 
are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written 
to 3^oung Lord "Warwick, in which he addresses him as " my 
dearest lord," and asks affectionate^ about his studies, and 
writes ver}^ prettilj^ about nightingales and birds'-nests, which 
he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales 
were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. 
Addison married her ladyship in 1716 ; and died at Holland 
House three 3'ears after that splendid but dismal union.* 

" Cato " ran for tliirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote 
the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue. 

It is worth noticing how many things in " Cato " keep their ground as 
habitual quotations, e.g. : — 

" . . . big with the fate 
Of Cato and of Rome." 

" 'Tis not in mortals to command success, 
But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." 

" Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury." 

** I think the Romans call it Stoicism." 

" My voice is still for war." 

" When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, 
The post of honor is a private station." 

Not to mention — 

" The woman who deliberates is lost." 

And the eternal — 

" Plato, thou reasonest well," 

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play ! 

* " The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on 
which a Turkish princess is espoused — to whom the Sultan is reported to 
pronounce, ' Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, 
if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness ; 

it neither foUnd them, nor made them, equal Rowe's ballad of ' The 

Despairing Shepherd ' is said to have been written, either before or after 
marriage, upon this memorable pair." — Dr. Johnson. 

" I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of 
State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to 
him before. At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 159 

But it is not for his reputation as the great author of 
^' Cato" and the "Campaign," or for his merits as Secretary 
of State, or for his rank and high distinction as mj^ Lady War- 
wick's husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of pohti- 
cal questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British 
Hberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler 
of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and 
love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human 
beino- that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and 
began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the 
gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow ; the kind judge who 
castigated only in smihng. While Swift went about, hanging 
and ruthless — a literary Jeffreys — in Addison's kind court 
only minor cases were tried : only peccadilloes and small sins 
aoainst society : only a dangerous hbertinism in tuckers and 
hoops ; * or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux canes and snuff- 

have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a 
wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man 
that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to 
resign them both." — Lady Wortley Montagu to Pope : Wurks, Lord 
WharncUffe's edit., vol. ii. p. 111. 

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who 
inherited, on her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which 
her father had purchased. She was of weak intellect, and died, unmarried, 
at an advanced age. . 

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison durmg his courtship, 
for his Collection contains " Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's 
going to Ireland," in which her ladyship is called " Chloe," and Joseph 
Addison " Lycidas ; " besides the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and 
which is entitled " Colin's Complaint." But not even the interest attached 
to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composi- 
tion, though one stanza may serve as a specimen : — 

" What though I have skill to complain — 
Though the Muses my temples have crowned ; 
What though, when they hear my soft strain, 
The virgins sit weeping around. 

" Ah, Colin ! thy hopes are in vain ; 
Thy pipe and thy laurel resign ; 
Thy false one inclines to a swain 
Whose music is sweeter than thine." 

* One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the 
Spectator tells us, particularly pleased his friend Sir Roger : 

" Mr. Spectator, — You have diverted the town almost a whole 
month at the expense of the country ; it is now high time that you should 
give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, 
the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which 



160 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

boxes . It ma}' be a lad}^ is tried for breaking the peace of our 
sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from 
the side-box ; or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking 
Priscian's head : or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the 
puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children : every 
one of the little sinners brought before him is amusing, and 
he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most 
charming words of admonition. 

Addison wrote his papers as gayly as if he was going out 
for a holiday. When Steele's '' Tatler" first began his prattle, 
Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured 
in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, 
the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his 
daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed 
an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty 3'ears old : 
full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his 
brain, manuring hastilj', subsoihng indifferentlj', cutting and 

began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a 
most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in sliort, sir, 
since our women know themselves to be out of the eye of the Spectator, 
tliey will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, 
for the modesty of their head-dresses ; for as the humor of a sick person is 
often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, 
instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon 
their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, 
and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same 
time that they shorten the superstructure. 

" The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are 
airy and very proper for the season ; but this I look upon to be only a pre- 
tence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more 
moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they copa- 
plain of cannot be in the weather ; besides, I would fain ask these tender- 
constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their 
mothers before them 1 

" I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of 
late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to 
keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honor cannot be 
better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst 
such a variety of outworks of lines and circumvallation. A female who is 
thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of 
an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way 
of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops. 

" Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious 
tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will 
have it that it portends the downfall of t!ie French king, and observe, that 
the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish 
monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and 
Vielieve it of the same prognostication as the tail of a blazing star. For my 
part, I am apt to think it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the 
world rather than going out of it," &c. &c. — Spectator No. 127. 



CONGREVE AND ADDISOX. ICl 

sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of 
letters. He had not done much as 3'et ; a few Latin poems — 
graceful prolusions ; a polite book of travels ; a dissertation on 
medals, not very deep ; four acts of a tragedy, a great classical 
exercise ; and the " Campaign," a large prize poem that won 
an enormous prize. But with his friend's discover}^ of the 
" Tatler," Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful 
talker in the world began to speak. He- does not go very deep : 
let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the 
plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he 
couldn't go ver}^ deep. There are no traces of suffering in his 
writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully 
selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. 
I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost 
his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about any woman in 
his life ; * whereas poor Dick Steele had capacit}^ enough to 
melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old 
eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into 
or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the 
consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching 
their prett}' humors , fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries ; and 
noting them v/ith the most charming archness. He sees them • 
in public, in the theatre, or the assembly, or the puppet-show ; 
or at the toyshop higgling for gloves and lace ; or at the 
auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a 
darling monster in Japan ; or at church, eying the width of 
their rivals' hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep 
down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the 
"Garter" in St. James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she 
blazes to the drawing-room with her coronet and six footmen ; 
and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the 
city, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her ear- 
ring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box ; or 
he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Sac- 
charissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her. 
chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only 
the public life of women. Addison was one of the most reso- 
lute club-men of his day. He passed many hours daily in those 
haunts. Besides drinking — which, alas ! is past praying for — 
— 3'OU must know it, he owned, too, ladies, that he indulged 
in that odious practice of smoking. Poor fellow ! He was a 

* " Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and 
must even be reduced, Hke a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make hig 
own." — Pope's Letters. 

n 



162 ENGLISH HUMOKISTS. 

man's man, remember. The onl}^ woman he did know, he 
didn't write about. I take it there would not have been much 
humor in that story. 

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the " Grecian," 
or the "Devil;" to pace 'Change and the Mall* — to mingle 

* " I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure 
till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild 
or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor ; with other particulars of a 
like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an au- 
thor. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design 
this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings ; 
and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in 
this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting 
will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with 

my own history There runs a story in the family, that when my 

mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that 
she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a 
lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a 
justice of the peace, I cannot determine ; for I am not so vain as to think 
it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though 
that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravi- 
ty of my behavior at my very first appearance in the worlds and all the 
time that I sucked, seemed to favor my mother's dream ; for, as she has 
often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and 
would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it. 

"As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, 
I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the 
reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favorite of my 
schoolmaster, who used to say that my parts were solid and would ivear well, 
I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a 
most profound silence ; for during the space of eight years, excepting in 
the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an 
hundred words ; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three 
sentences together in my whole life 

" I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen 
in most public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my 

select friends that know me There is no place of general resort 

wherein I do not often make my appearance ; sometimes I am seen thrust- 
ing my head into a round of politicians at * Will's,' and listening with great 
attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. 
Sometimes I smoke a pipe at 'Child's,' and whilst I seem attentive to noth- 
ing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. 
I appear on Tuesday night at ' St. James's Coffee-house ; ' and sometimes 
join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to 
hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the ' Grecian,* 
the ' Cocoa-tree,' and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Hay- 
market. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above 
these two years ; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock- 
jobbers at ' Jonathan's.' In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I 
mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club. 

" Thus I live in the world rather as a ' Spectator ' of mankind than as 
one of the species ; by which means I have made myself a speculative 
■tatesman, soldier, merchant and artisan, without ever meddling in any 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 1G3 

in that great club of the world — sitting alone in it somehow : 
having good-will and kindness for every single man and woman 
in it — having need of some habit and custom binding him to 
some few ; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong 
to hint a little doubt about a man's parts, and to damn him 
with faint praise) ; and so he looks on the world and inlays 
with the ceaseless humors of all of us — laughs the kindest 
laugh — points our neighbor's foible or eccentricit}^ out to us 
with the most good-natured, smiling confidence ; and then, 
turning over his shoulder, whispers our foibles to our neighbor. 
What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and 
his charming little brain-cracks ? * If the good knight did not 
call out to the people sleeping in church, and say ''Amen" 
with such a delightful pomposity : if he did not make a speech 
in the assize-court apropos de bottes, and merely to show his 
dignity to Mr. Spectator : t if he did not mistake Madam Doll 
•Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden ; if he wei-e 
wiser than he is : if he had not his humor to salt his life, and 
were but a mere English gentleman and game-preserver — of 
wh^t worth were he to us ? We love him for his vanities as 
much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in him ; 

practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or 
a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diver- 
sions of others, better than those who are engaged in them — as standers- 
by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game. . . . 
In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is 
the character I intend to preserve in this paper." — Spectator, No. 1. 

* " So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had 
recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open viola- 
tion of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of 
a fool." — Macaulay. 

t " The Court was sat before Sir Roger came ; but, notwithstanding all 
the justices had taken their places upon the bench, tiiey made room for the 
old knight at the head of them ; who for his reputation in the country took 
occasion to whisper in the judge's ear that he teas glad his lordship had met 
with so wuch good weather in his circuit. I was listening to tlie proceedings 
of the Court with much attention, and infinitely pleased^ with that great 
appearance and solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public 
administration of our laws ; v/hen, after about an hour's sitting, I observed, 
to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was 
getting up to speak. I was in some pain for liim, till I found he had ac- 
quitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business 
and great intrepidity. 

" Upon his first rising, the Court was hushed, and a general whisper 
ran among the country people that Sir Roger was up. The speech he made 
was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an 
account of it, and I believe was not so much designed by the knight him- 
eelf to inform the Court as to give him a figure in my eyes, and to keep up 
his credit in the country." Spectator, No. 122. 



164 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out 
of that laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of 
those harmless eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched 
brain, and out of that honest manhood and simplicity — we 
get a result of happiness, goodness, tenderness, pit}^ piet}' ; 
such as, if my audience will think their reading and hearing 
over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to in- 
spire. And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only 
by gentlemen in black coats ? Must the truth be onl}' expounded 
in gown and surplice, and out of those two vestments can 
nobody preach it? Commend me to this dear preacher without 
orders — this parson in the t3'e-wig. When this man looks 
from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, 
up to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardh' fancy 
a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture : a human 
intellect thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Joseph 
Addison's. Listen to him : from 3'our childhood you have 
known the verses : but who can hear their sacred music with- 
out love and awe ? — 

ft 

" Soon as the evening shades prevail, 
The moon takes up the wondrous tale. 
And nightly to the listening earth 
Repeats the story of her birth ; 
Whilst all the stars tliat round her bum, 
And all the planets in their turn, 
Confirm the tidings as they roll, 
And spread the trutli from pole to pole. 
What though, in solemn silence, all 
Move round the dark terrestrial ball ; 
What though no real voice nor sound 
Amid their radiant orbs be found ; 
In reason's ear they all rejoice. 
And utter forth a glorious voice, 
For ever singing as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine." 

It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. Thej^ 
shine out of a great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven a 
Sabbath comes over that man's mind : and his face lights up 
from it with a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of 
religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the 
town : looking at the birds in the trees : at the children in the 
streets : in the mornino; or in the moonlioht : over his books iji 
his own room : in a happy party at a country merry-making or 
a town assembly, good-will and peace to God's creatures, and 
love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and 



CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 165 

shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most wretched, 
I think Addison's was one of the most enviable. A life pros- 
perous and beautiful — a calm death — an immense fame and 
affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.* 

* "Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his 
death-bed, to ask hiin whether the Christian religion was true." — Dr. 
Young. Spence's Anecdotes. 

" I liave always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. Tlie latter I consider 
as an act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is short and tran- 
sient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the 
greatest transports of rau'th who are subject to the greatest depression of 
n)elancholy : on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the 
mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths 
of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom 
of clouds, and glitters for a moment ; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day- 
light in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.'' — 
Addison : Spectator, No. 381. 



STEELE. 



What do we look for in studying the history of a past age ? 
Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the 
leading public men? is it to make ourselves acquainted with 
the life and being of the time ? If we set out with the former 
grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has 
it entire? What character of Avhat great man is known to you? 
You can but make guesses as to character more or less happ3\ 
In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole 
conduct, setting out from a wrong impression ? The tone of a 
voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behavior — the cut of his 
hair or the tie of his neck-cloth ma}' disfigure him in 3'our eyes, 
or poison your good opinion ; or at the end of years of intimacy it 
may be your closest friend says something, reveals something 
which had previouslj^ been a secret, which alters all your vievvs 
about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a differ- 
ent motive to that which 3'ou fancied 30U knew. And if it is 
so with those 3'ou know, how much more with those 3'ou don't 
know? Sa3^, for example, that I want to understand the char- 
acter of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift's histor3^ of 
the times in which he took a part ; the shrewdest of observers 
and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age — he 
hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubt- 
ful military capacit3' : he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible 
boor, and scarcel3' mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue 
of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bring- 
ing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by 
a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, 
of sonorous language, of what is called the best information ; 
and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which, I 



STEELE. 167 

believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough's career, which 
caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and 
treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed 
him finall}'^ on the Hanoverian side — the winning side : I get, 
I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of 
either writer, and believe that Coxe's portrait, or Swift's por- 
trait, is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single 
instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say 
to the Muse of History, " O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, 
I doubt ever}" single statement you ever made since your lad}'- 
ship was a Muse ! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, 
3'ou are not a whit more trustworthy than some of 3'our lighter 
sisters on whom j'^our partisans look down. You bid me listen 
to a general's oration to his soldiers : Nonsense ! He no more 
made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You 
pronounce a panegyric of a hero : I doubt it, and say you flatter 
outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character : 
I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of 
the Dons. You oflTer me an autobiography : I doubt all auto- 
biographies I ever read ; except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robin- 
son Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no 
object in setting themselves right with the public or their own 
consciences ; these have no motive for concealment or half- 
truths ; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully 
give, and do not force me to tax m}^ credulity or to fortify it by 
evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume 
of the Spectator^ and say the fiction carries a greater amount of 
truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. 
Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the 
time ; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, 
the laughter, the ridicules of society — the old times live again, 
and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest 
historian do more for me ? " 

As we read in these delightful volumes of the Tatler and 
Spectator the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is 
revivified. The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London ; 
the churches are thronged with daily worshippers ; the beaux 
are gathering in the coffee-houses ; the gentry are going to the 
Drawing-room ; the ladies are thronging to the to3-shops ; the 
chairmen are jostling in the streets ; the footmen are running 
with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre 
doors. In the country I see the 3^oung Squire riding to Eton 
with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of 
the family, to see him safe. To make that journey from* the 



168 ENGLISH HmiORFSTS. 

Squire's and back, Will is a week on horseback. The coach 
takes five days between London and Bath. The judges and 
the bar ride the circuit. If my lad}^ comes to town in her post- 
chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain 
Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to 
prepare apartments for her at the great caravanserais on the 
road ; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the 
"Bell" or the "Ram," and he and his chamberlains bow her 
up the great stair to the state-apartments, whilst her carriage 
rumbles into the court-,yard, where the " Exeter Fly" is housed 
that performs the journey in eight days, God willing, having 
achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its pas- 
sengers for supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe 
in the kitchen, where the Captain's man — having hung up his 
master's half pike — is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of 
Ramillies and Malplaquet to the town's-folk, who have their 
club in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the cham- 
bermaid in the wooden galler}-, or bribing her to know who is 
the pretty 3'oung mistress that has come in the coach. The 
pack-horses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers 
carousing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady's bar, over a 
glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of militar}' appearance, 
who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world does, and 
has a rattling gray mare in the stables which will be saddled 
and away with its owner half an hour before the "Fly" set» 
out on its last day's flight. And some five miles on the road, 
as the " Exeter Fly" comes jingling and creaking onwards, it 
will suddenly be brought to a halt b}^ a gentleman on a gray 
mare, with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol 
into the coach window, and bids the company to hand out their 

purses It must have been no small pleasure even to sit 

in the great kitchen in those da3's, and see the tide of human- 
kind pass by. We arrive at places now, but we travel no more. 
Addison talks jocularly of a diff'erence of manner and costume 
being quite perceivable at Staines, where there passed a 3'oung 
fellow " with a very tolerable periwig," though, to be sure, his 
hat was out of fashion, and had a Ramillies cock. I would 
have liked to travel in those da3's (being of that class of travel- 
lers who are proverbialh' pretty eas3" coram latronibas) and have 
seen m3" friend with the gra3^ mare and the black vizard. Alas ! 
there always came a day in the life of that warrior when it was 
the fashion to accompany him as he passed — without his black 
mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, accompanied b3' hal- 
berdiers and attended by the sheriff, — in a carriage without 



STEELE. 169 

springs, and a clerg3'man jolting beside him, to a spot close by 
Cumberland Gate and the Marble Arch, where a stone still 
records that here Tyburn turnpike stood. What a change in a 
centurj' ; in a few 3'ears I Within a few 3"ards.of that gate the 
fields began : the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges of 
which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has 
grown over those meadows. Were a man brought to die there 
now, the windows would be closed and the inhabitants keep 
their houses in sickening horror. A hundred years back, peo- 
ple crowded to see that last act of a highwayman's life, and 
make jokes on it. Swift laughed at him, grimh^ advising him 
to provide a Holland shirt and white cap crowned with a crim- 
son or black ribbon for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully 
— shake hands with the hangman, and so — farewell. Gay 
wrote the most delightful ballads, and made merry over the 
same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present 
humorists ! Compare those morals and ours — those manners 
and ours ! 

We can't tell — 3'ou would not bear to be told the whole 
truth regarding those men and manners. You could no more 
suffer in a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen 
Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lad}' of Queen Anne's time, 
or hear what they heard and said, than 3'ou would receive an 
ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one 
contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific 
pastimes, of the men of pleasure of that age. We have our 
fine gentlemen, and our " fast men ; " permit me to give j'ou 
an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen Anne's 
da3's, whose biograph}' has been preserved to us by the law 
reporters. 

In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun 
was tried by his peers for the murder of William Mountford, 
comedian. In "Howell's State Trials," the reader will find 
not onty an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, 
but of the times and manners of those days. My lord's friend, 
a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. 
Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, deter- 
mined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackne3'- 
coach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid 
him in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four 
leaders being in waiting elsewhere) took its station opposite 
my Lord Craven's house in Drury Lane, b3' which door Mrs. 
Bracegirdle was to pass on her wa3' from the theatre. As she 
passed in compan3' of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the 



170 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page 
and attacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his 
noble friend endeavored to force Madam Bracegirdle into the 
coach. Mr. Page called for help : the population of Drury 
Lane rose : it was impossible to effect the capture ; and bidding 
the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, 
Hill let go of his pre^^ sulkih', and waited for other opportuni- 
ties of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was 
Will Mountford, the comedian ; Will removed, he thought Mrs. 
Bracegirdle might be his : and accordingly the Captain and his 
lordship la}- that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming 
out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in 
talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorne3'-General, made a pass 
and ran him clean through the bod}'. 

Sixty-one of m}' lord's peers finding him not guilt}'' of mur- 
der, while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast noble- 
man was discharged : and made his appearance seven years 
after in another trial for murder — when he, my Lord Warwick, 
and three gentlemen of the military profession, were concerned 
in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote. 

This jolly company were drinking together at " Lockit's " in 
Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain Coote 
and Captain French ; whom my Lord Mohun and my Lord the 
Earl of Warwick * and Holland endeavored to pacify. My 
Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him a 
hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards ; once 
when the captain was arrested for 13/. by his tailor, my lord 
lent him five guineas, often paid his reckoning for him, and 
showed him other offices of friendship. On this evening the 
disputants, French and Coote, being separated whilst they were 
upstairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again at the bar of 

* The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the 
father of the young Earl, who was brought to his step-father's bed to see 
" how a Christian could die." He was amongst the wildest of the nobility 
of that day ; and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at the British 
Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks of the gay lord. 
He was popular in London, as such daring spirits have been in our time. 
The anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical jokes. Mohun was 
scarcely out of prison for his second homicide, when he went on Lord 
Macclesfield's embassy to the Elector of Hanover, when Queen Anne sent 
the garter to H. E. Highness. The chronicler of the expedition speaks of 
his lordship as an amiable young man, who had been in iDad company, but 
was quite repentant and reformed. He and Macartney afterwards mur- 
dered the Duke of Hamilton between them, in which act Lord Mohun died. 
This amiable baron's name was Charles, and not Henry, as a recent noT' 
elist has christened him. 



STEELE. 171 

*' Lockit's." The row began afresh — Coote hinged at French 
over the bar, and at last all six called' for chairs, and went to 
Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their lordships engaged 
on the side of Captain Coote. M}^ Lord of Warwick was 
severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was stabbed, 
but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds — one es- 
pecially, "a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, 
and piercing through the diaphragma," which did for Captain 
Coote. Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun : 
hence the assemblage of peers, the report of the transaction, in 
which these defunct fast men still live for the observation of 
the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by 
the Deputy Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe 
carried before him by the gentleman gaoler, who stood with it 
at the bar at the right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge 
from him ; the prisoner, at his approach, making three bows, 
one to his Grace the Lord High Steward, the other to the peers 
on each hand ; and his Grace and the peers return the salute. 
And besides these great personages, augu«t in periwigs, and 
nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out 
of the past and pass before us — the 30113^^ captains brawling in 
the tavern, and laughing and cursing over their cups — the 
drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the bailiff on the 
prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black lampless 
streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords 
are clashing in the garden within. " Help there ! a gentleman 
is hurt ! " The chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gen- 
tleman over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, 
to the Bagnio in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon 
— a pretty tall gentleman : but that wound under the short 
ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chair- 
men, and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be 3'ou now? 
The gentleman axeman's head is off his own shoulders ; the 
lords and judges can wag theirs no longer ; the bailiff's writs 
have ceased to run ; the honest chairmen's pipes are put out, 
and with their brawny calves they have walked away into 
Hades -^ all as irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or 
Captain Coote. The subject of our night's lecture saw all 
these people — rode in Captain Coote's company of the Guards 
very probably — wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home 
tipsy in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern — 
fled from many a bailiff. 

In 1709, when the publication of the Tatler began, our 
great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and 



172 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

delightful paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light 
literature in a later day exhibited when the Waverle}^ novels 
appeared, upon which the public vushed, forsaking that feeble 
entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the Anne of Swan- 
seas, and worthy Mrs. Radclitf'e herself, with her dreary castles 
and exploded old ghosts, had had prett\' much the monopol}''. 
I have looked over man^^ of the comic books with which our 
ancestors amused themselves, from the novels of Swift's coad- 
jutrix, Mrs. Mauley, the delectable author of the "New Atlan- 
tis," to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom 
Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the " London Spy" and sev- 
e]-al other volumes of ribakhy. The slang of the taverns and 
ordinaries, the wit of the Bagnios, form the strongest part of 
the ftiri'ago of which these libels are composed. In the excel- 
lent newspaper collection at the British Museum, 3'ou may 
see, besides, the Craftsmen and Postboy specimens, and queer 
specimens the}^ are, of the higher literature of Queen Anne's 
time. Here is an abstract from a notable journal bearing date, 
Wednesday, October 13th, 1708, and entitled " The British 
Apollo ; or, curious amusements for the ingenious, hy a society of 
gentlemen.'' The British Apollo invited and professed to answer 
questions upon all subjects of wit, moralitv, science, and even 
religion ; and two out of its four pages are filled with queries 
and replies much like some of the oracular penn}^ prints of the 
present time. 

One of the first querists, referring to the passage that a 
bishop should be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy 
is justifiable in the laitj'. The society of gentlemen conducting 
the British Apollo are posed by this casuist, and promise to 
ffive him an answer. Celinda then wishes to know from " the 
gentlemen," concerning the souls of the dead, whether they 
shall have the satisfaction to know those whom they most val- 
ued in this transitor}^ life. The gentlemen of the Apollo give 
but cold comfort to poor Celinda. The}' are inclined to think 
not : for, sa}^ the}', since every inhabitant of those regions will 
be infinitely dearer than here are our nearest relatives — what 
have we to do with a partial friendship in that happy place? 
Poor Celinda ! it may have been a child or a lover whom she 
had lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of British Apollo 
gave her this dismal answer. She has solved the question for 
herself by this time, and knows quite as well as the society of 
gentlemen. 

From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, " Why 
does hot water freeze sooner than cold?" Apollo replies, 



Q 

W 

&> 

H 
H 

w 

W 
> 
H 
H 
t-^ 
W 

o 

>^ 

w 
o 




STEELE. 173 

" Hot water cannot be said to freeze sooner than cold ; but 
water once heated and cold, may be subject to freeze by the 
evaporation of the spirituous parts of the water, which renders 
it less able to withstand the power of frosty weather." 

The next query is rather a delicate one. "You, Mr. 
Apollo, who are said to be the God of wisdom, pra}^ give us 
the reason why kissing is so much in fashion : what benefit one 
receives by it, and who was the inventor, and you will oblige 
Corinna." To this queer demand the lips of Phoebus, smiling, 
answer : ' ' Pretty innocent Corinna ! Apollo owns that he was 
a little surprised by your kissing question, particularly at that 
part of it where 3'ou desire to know the benefit you receive by 
it. Ah ! madam, had you a lover, you would not come to 
Apollo for a solution ; since there is no dispute but the kisses 
of mutual lovers give infinite satisfaction. As to its invention, 
'tis certain nature was its author, and it began with the first 
courtship." 

After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages 
of poems, signed by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and 
chiefly on the tender passion ; and the paper wound up with a 
letter from Leghorn, an account of the Duke of Marlborough 
and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for publishing- 
two sheets on the present state of ^Ethiopia, by Mr. Hill : all 
of which is printed for the authors by J. Ma3'o, at the Printing 
Press against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it 
must have been — how Apollo's oracles must have been struck 
dumb, when the Tatler appeared, and scholars, gentlemen, men 
of the world, men of genius, began to speak ! 

Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had 
begun to make acquaintance with Enghsh court manners and 
English servitude, in Sir William Temple's family, another 
Irish youth was brous-ht to learn his humanities at the old 
school of Charterhouse, near Smithfield ; to which foundation 
he had been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor 
of the House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was 
an orphan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet 
pathos and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a 
life which was destined to be chequered by a strange variety of 
good and evil fortune. 

I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters 
and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft- 
hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped 
deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good 
parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, 



174 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

and onh' took just as much trouble as should enable him to 
scuffle through his exercises, and b}^ good fortune escape the 
flogging- block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have 
myself inspected, but only as an amateur, that instrument 
of righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a se- 
cluded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School ; and 
have no doubt it is the ver}' counterpart, if not the ancient and 
interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted 
himself to the tormentors. 

Besides being very kind, laz}', and good-natured, this boy 
went invariably' into debt with the tart-woman ; ran out of 
bounds, and entered into pecuniar3% or rather promissor}', en- 
gagements with the neighboring lollipop-venders and piemen — 
exhibited an earl}- fondness and capacity for drinking mum and 
sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to 
lend. I have no sort of authorit}' for the statements here made 
of Steele's earl}^ hfe ; but if the child is father of the man, the 
father of young Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without 
taking a degree, and entered the Life Guards — the father of 
Captain Steele of Lucas's Fusiliers, who got his company 
through the patronage of m}' Lord Cutts — the father of Mr. 
Steele the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the Gazette, 
the Tatler, and Spectator^ the expelled Member of Parliament, 
and the author of the " Tender Husband" and the " Conscious 
Lovers ; " if man and bo}' resembled each other, Dick Steele the 
schoolboy must have been one of the most generous, good-for- 
nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb 
tupto, I beat, tuptomai, I am whipped, in any school in Great 
Britain. 

Almost Q\Qxy gentleman who does me the honor to hear me 
will remember that the ver}' greatest character which he has 
seen in the course of his life, and the person to whom he has 
looked up with the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head 
boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires 
such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the school- 
master himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, 
and every little bo^^ listens. He writes off copies of Latin verses 
as melodiousl}" as Virgil. He is good-natured, and, his own 
masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies of verses for other 
boys with an astonishing ease and fluencj' ; the idle ones only 
trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in their exer- 
cises, and whipped because their poems were too good. I have 
seen great men in my time, but never such a great one as that 
bead boy of my childhood : we all thought he must be Prime 



STEELE. 17d 

Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting him in after life to 
find he was no more than six feet high. 

Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an 
admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faith- 
fully through his life. Through the school and through the 
world, whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, wa}- 
ward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his 
head bov. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best 
themes. He ran on Addison's messages : fagged for him and 
blacked his shoes : to be in Joe's company- was Dick's greatest 
pleasure ; and he took a sermon or a caning from his monitor 
with the most boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affec- 
tion.* 

Steele found Addison a stately college Don at Oxford, and 
himself did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a 
comedy, which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow 
burned there ; and some verses, which I dare saj' are as sublime 
as other gentlemen's composition at that age ; but being smitten 
with a sudden love for military glory, he threw up the cap and 
gown for the saddle and Ijridle, and rode privately in the Horse 
Guards, in the Duke of Ormond's troop — the second — and 
probabh', with the rest of the gentlemen of his troop, "all 
mounted on black horses with white feathers in their hats, and 
scarlet coats richly laced," marched by King William, in H^xle 
Park, in November, 1699, and a great show of the nobilit}-, be- 
sides twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. 
" The Guards had just got their new clothes," the London Post 
said: " the}^ are extraordinary grand, and thought to be the 
finest body of horse in the world." But Steele could hardly 
have seen any actual service. He who wrote about himself, his 
mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine 
he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen anv. 
His old patron, Ormond, probabh' got him his cornetcy in the 
Guards, from which he was promoted to be a captain in Lu- 
cas's Fusiliers, getting his compan}- through the patronage of 
Lord Cutts, whose secretar}- he was, and to whom he dedicated 
his work called the "Christian Hero." As for Dick, whilst 



* " Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show 
it, in all companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then, used 
to play a little upon liim ; but he always took it well." — Pope. Spence's 
Anecdotes. 

" Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the work! : even 
in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to please and 
be pleased." — Dr. Young. Spence's Anecdotes. 



176 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in 
drink, and in all the follies of the town ; it is related that all 
the officers of Lucas's, and the gentlemen of the Guards, 
laughed at Dick.* And in truth a theologian in liquor is not a 

* The gayety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene be- 
tween two brilliant sisters, from his comedy " Tlie Funeral, or Grief a la 
Mode." Dick wrote this, lie said, from " a necessity of enlivening his char- 
acter," which, it seemed, the " Christian Hero " had a tendency to make 
too decorous, grave, and respectable in the eyes of readers of that pious 
piece. 

{Scene draws and discovers Lady Charlotte, reading at a table, — Lady 
Harriet, playing at a glass, to and fro, and viewing her§elj'.] 

" L. Ha. — Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [looking at her- 
self as she speaks] as sit staring at a book which I know you can't attend. 
— Good Dr. Lucas may have writ there what he pleases, but there's no 
putting Francis, Lord Hardy, now Earl of Brumpton, out of your head, or 
making him absent from your eyes. Do but look on me, now, and deny it 
if you can. 

" L. Ch. — You are the maddest girl [smiling]. 

" L. Ha. — Look ye, I knew j'ou could not say it and forbear laughing 
[looking over Charlotte]. — Oh ! I see his name as plain as you do — F-r-a-n, 
Fran, — c-i-s, cis, Francis, 'tis in every line of the book. 

" L. Ch. [rising]. — It's in vain, I see, to mind anything in such imper- 
tinent company — but granting 'twere us you say, as to my Lord Hardy — 
'tis more excusable to admire another than oneself. 

" L. Ha. — No, I think not, — yes, I grant you, than really to be vain 
of one's person, but I don't admire myself — Pish! I don't believe my eyes 
to have that softness. [Looking in the glass] They a'n't so piei'cing : no, 
'tis only stuff, the men will be talking. — Some people are such admirers 
of teeth — Lord, what signifies teeth! [Showing her teeth.] A very black- 
amoor has as white a set of teeth as I. — No, sister, I don't admire myself, 
but I've a spirit of contradiction in me : I don't know I'm in love with my- 
self, only to rival the men. 

" L. Ch. — A}', but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev'n of that rival of 
his, your dear self. 

" L. Ha. — Oh, what have I done to you, that you should name that 
insolent intruder ? A confident, opionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a 
poetical lover of mine sighed and sung of both sexes. 

The public envy and the public care, 

I shan't be so easily catched — I thank him — I want but to be sure I should 
heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he 
should depart this life or not. 

" L. Ch. — Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your 
humor does not at all become you. 

" L. Ha. — Vanity ! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere 
than you wise folks : all your life's an art. — Speak your soul. — Look you 
there. — [ Hauling her to the glass.] Are you not struck with a secret pleas- 
ure when you view that bloom in your look, that harmony in your shape, 
that promptitude in your mein? 

" L. Ch. — Well, simpleton, if lam at first po simple as to be a little 
taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to correct it. 



II 



STEELE. 177 

respectable object, and a hermit, though he may be out at el- 
bows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele sa3's of himself 
that he was alwaj's sinning and repenting. He beat his breast 
and cried most piteously when he did repent : but as soon as 
crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that 
charming paper in the Taller^ in which he records his father's 
death, his mother's griefs, his own most solemn and tender 
emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a hamper 
of wine, " the same as is to be sold at Garraway's, next week ; " 
upon the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and they 
fall to instantly, " drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit 
to themselves, and not separating till two o'clock in the morn- 
ing." 

His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting 
it, bringing him a bottle from the "Rose," or inviting him 
over to a bout there with Sir Plume and Mr. Diver ; and Dick 
wiped his eyes, which were whimpering over his papers, took 
down his laced hat, put on his sword and wig, kissed his wife 
and children, told them a lie about pressing business, and went 
off to the " Rose " to the jolly fellows. 

While Mr. Addison was abroad, and after he came home in 
rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabby 
lodging in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was cutting a 
much smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Cliar- 
terhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk. Could not some painter 
give an interview between the gallant captain of Lucas's, with 
his hat cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished 
with drink, and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and 
poor, his friend and monitor of school-days, of all days? How 
Dick must have bragged about his chances and his hopes, and 
the fine company he kept, and the charms of the reigning 
toasts and popular actresses, and the number of bottles that 
he and my lord and some other pretty fellows had cracked 



" L. Ha. — Pshaw ! Pshaw ! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Far- 
dingale, 'tis too soon for me to think at that rate. 

'< L. Ch. — They that think it too soon to understand themselves will 
very soon find it too late —But tell me honestly, don't you like Campley ? 

" L. Ha. — The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did 
not think of getting me so easily. — Oh, I hate a heart I can't break when 
I please. — What makes the value of dear china, but that 'tis so brittle 7^ 

— were it not for that, you might as well have stone mugs in your closet." 

— The Funeral., Oct. 2nd. 

" We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele's] ; there 
being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom his Tat- 
lers had not made better by his recommendation of them." — Gibber. 

12 



178 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

over-night at the "Devil," or the "Garter!" Cannot one 
fancy Joseph Addison's calm smile and cold gra}' ej'es following 
Dick for an instant, as he struts down the Mall, to dine with 
the Guard at St. James's, before he turns with his sober pace 
and threadbare suit, to walk back to his lodgings up the two 
pair of stairs? Steele's name was down for promotion, Dick 
always said himself, in the glorious, pious, and immortal Wil- 
liam's last table-book. Jonathan Swift's name had been writ- 
ten there b}^ the same hand too. 

Our worthy friend, the author of the "Christian Hero," 
continued to make no small figure about town b}' the use of 
his wits.* He was appointed Gazetteer: he wrote, in 1703, 
"The Tender Husband," his second play, in which there is 
some delightful farcical writing, and of which he fondl}' owned 
in after-life, and when Addison was no more, that there were 
"many applauded strokes" from Addison's beloved hand.j 
Is it not a pleasant partnership to remember? Can't one fanc}' 
Steele full of spirits and youth, leaving his gay compan}' to go 
to Addison's lodging, where his friend sits in the shabb}' sitting- 
room, quite serene, and cheerful, and poor? In 1704, Steele 
came on the town with another comed}^, and behold it was so 
moral and religious, as poor Dick insisted, — so dull the town 
thous^ht, — that the " Lvins Lover ". was damned. 

Addison's hour of success now came, and he was able to 
help our friend the " Christian Hero" in such a way, that, if 
there had been any chance of keeping that poor tipsy cham- 
pion upon his legs, his fortune was safe, and his competence as- 
sured. Steele procured the place of Commissioner of Stamps : 
he wrote so richl^^ so gracefully often, so kindlj^ alwaj's, with 

* " There is not now in his sight that excellent man, whom Heaven 
made his friend and superior, to be at a certain place in pain for what he 
should say or do. I will go on in his further encouragement. The best 
woman that ever man had cannot now lament and pine at his neglect of 
himself." — Steele [of himself] : The Theatre. No. 12, Feb. 1719-20. 

t " The Funeral " supplies an admirable stroke of humor, — one which 
Sydney Smith has used as an illustration of the faculty in his Lectures. 

The undertaker is talking to his emploi/e's about their duty. 

Sable. — " Ha, you ! — A little more upon the dismal [formvifj their 
countenances] ; this fellow has a good mortal look, — place him near the 
corpse : that wainscot-face must he o' top of the stairs ; that fellow's almost 
in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the end 
of the hall. So — But I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no laughing now 
on any provocation. Look yonder, — that hale, well-looking puppy ! You 
ungrateful scoundrel, did not I pity you, take you out of a great man's 
service, and show you the pleasure of receiving wages ^ Did not I give 
you ten, then fifteen, and twenty shillings a week to be sorrowful ? — and the mor« 
I give you I think the gladder you are I " 



STEELE. 179 

such a pleasant wit and easy frankness, with such a gush of 
good spirits and good humor, that his early papers ma^' be 
compared to Addison's own, and are to be read, by a male 
reader at least, with quite^an equal pleasure.* 

* " From my own Apartment, Nov. 16. 

" There are several persons who have many pleasures and entertain- 
ments in their possession, which tliey do not enjoy ; it is, therefore, a kind 
and good office to acquaint them with their own happiness, and turn their 
attention to such instances of their good fortune as they are apt to over- 
look. Persons in the married state often want such a monitor ; and pine 
away their days by looking upon tlie same condition in anguish and mur- 
muring, which carries with it, in the opinion of others, a complication of all 
the pleasures of life, and a retreat from its inquietudes. 

" I am led into this thought by a visit I made lo an old friend who was 
formerly my schoolfellow. He came to town last week, with his family, 
for the winter; and yesterday morning sent me word his wife expected 
me to dmner. I am, as it were, at home at that house, and every member 
of it knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot, indeed, express the pleasure 
it is to be met by the children with so much joy as I am when I go thither. 
The boys and girls strive who shall come first, when they think it is I that 
am knocking at the door ; and that child which loses the race to me runs 
back again to tell the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff. This day I was led in 
by a pretty girl that we all thought must have forgot me ; for the family 
has been out of town these two years. Ker knowing me again was a 
mighty subject with us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance ; 
after which, they began to rally me upon a thousand little stories they 
heard in the country, about my marriage to one of my neighbors' daugh- 
ters ; upon which, the gentleman, my friend, said, ' Nay ; if Mr. Bickerstaff 
marries a child of any of his old companions, 1 hope mine shall have the 
preference: there is Mrs. Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine 
a widow as the best of them. But I know him too well ; he is so enam- 
ored with the very memory of those who flourished in our youth, that lie 
will not so much as look upon the modern beauties. I remember, old 
gentleman, how often you went home in a day to refresh your countenance 
and dress when Teraminta reigned in your heart. As we came up in the 
coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.' With such 
reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed our time 
during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dhmer his lady left the room, 
as did also the children. As soon as we were alone, he took me by the 
hand : ' Well, my good friend,' says he. * I am heartily glad to see thee ; I 
was afraid you would never have seen all the company that dined with you 
to-day again. Do not you think the good woman of the house a little 
altered since you followed her from the playhouse to find out who she was 
for me ? ' I perceived a tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which 
moved me not a little. But, to turn the discourse, I said, ' She is not, in- 
deed, that creature she was when she returned me the letter I carried from 
you, and told me, "She hoped, as I was a gentleman,! would be employed 
no more to trouble her, who had never offended me ; but would be so much 
the gentleman's friend as to dissuade him from a pursuit which he could 
never succeed in." You may remember I thought her in earnest, and you 
were forced to employ your cousin Will, who made his sister get acquainted 
with her for you. You cannot expect her to be forever fifteen.' ' Fifteen ! ' 
replied my good friend. 'Ah! you little understand — you, that have 



180 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

After the Tatler in 1711, the famous Spectator made its ap- 
pearance, and this was followed, at various intervals, b}' many 

lived a bachelor — how great, how exquisite a pleasure there is in being 
really beloved ! It is impossible that the most beauteous face in nature 
should raise in me such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent 
woman. That fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watching 
with me in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which had 
like to have carried me off last winter. I tell you, sincerely, I have so 
many obligations to her tliat I cannot, with any sort of moderation, think 
of her present state of health. But, as to what you say of fifteen, site 
gives me every day pleasure beyond what I ever knew in the possession of 
her beauty when I was in the vigor of youth. Every moment of her hfe 
brings me fresh instances of her complacency to my inclinations, and her 
prudence in regard to my fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful 
than when I first saw it ; there is no decay in any feature which I cannot 
trace from the very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for 
my welfare and interests. Thus, at the same time, methinks, the love I 
conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened by my gratitude for 
what she is. The love of a wife is as much above the idle passion com- 
monly called by that name, as the loud laughter of buffoons is inferior to 
the elegant mirth of gentlemen. Oh! she is an inestimable jewel ! In her 
examination of her household affairs, she shows a certain fearfulness to 
find a fault, which makes her servants obey her like children ; and the 
meanest we have has an ingenuous shame for an offence not always to be 
seen in children in other families. I speak freely to you, my old friend; 
ever since her sickness, things that gave me the quickest' joy before turn 
now to a certain anxiety. As the children play. in the next room, I know 
the poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must do 
should they lose their mother in their tender years. The pleasure I used 
to take in telling my boy stories of battles, and asking my girl questions 
about tlie disposal ol her baby, and the gossiping of it, is turned into inward 
reflection and melancholy.' 

" He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady en- 
tered, and, with an inexpressible sweetness in her countenance, told us 
' she had been searching her closet for something very good to treat such 
an old friend as I was.' Her husband's eyes sparkled with pleasure at the 
cheerfulness of her countenance ; and 1 saw all his fears vanish in an in- 
stant. The lady observing something in our looks which showed we had 
been more serious than ordinary, and seeing her husband receive her with 
great concern under a forced cheerfulness, immediately guessed at what 
we had been talking of; and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, 
* Mr. Bickerstaff, do not believe a word of what he tells you ; I shall still 
live to have you for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he 
takes more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town. You 
must know he tells me, that he finds London is a much more healthy place 
than the country ; for he sees several of his old acquaintances and school 
fellows are here — young fellows loith fair, full-bottomed perhvigs. I could 
scarce keep him this morning from going out open-breasted.' My friend, who ' 
is always extremely delighted with her agreeable humor, made her sit 
down with us. She did it with that easiness which is peculiar to women 
of sense ; and to keep up the good humor she had brought in with her, 
turned her raillery upon me. * Mr. Bickerstaff, you remember you followed 
me one night from the playhouse ; suppose you should carry me thither 
to-morrow night, and lead me in the front box.' This put us into a long 



STEELE. 181 

periodicals under the same editor — the Guardian — i\iQ Eng- 
lishman — the Lover ^ whose love was rather insipid — the 
Reader^ of whom the public saw no more after his second ap- 
pearance — the Theatre^ under the pseudon3'm of Sir John Ed- 
gar, which Steele wrote while Governor of the Ro3'al Company 
of Comedians, to which post, and to that of Surve^'or of the 
Roj'al Stables at Hampton Court, and to the Commission of 
the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honor of knighthood, 
Steele had been preferred soon after the accession of George 
I. ; whose cause honest Dick had nobl}' fought, through dis- 
grace, and danger, against the most formidable enemies, 
against traitors and bullies, against Bolingbroke and Swift in 
the last reign. With the arrival of the King, that splendid 

field of discourse about the beauties who were the mothers to the present, 
and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her, ' 1 was glad she 
liad transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question but her 
eldest daughter was within half a year of being a toast.' 

" We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the 
young lady, when, on a sudden, we were alarmed witli the noise of a drum, 
and immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war. His 
mother, between laughing and chiding, would have him put out of the 
room: but I would not part with him so. I found, upon conversation with 
liim, though he was a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent 
parts, and was a great master of all the learning on the other side of eight 
years old. I perceived him a very great historian in ' ^sop's Fables ; ' but 
he frankly declared to me his mind, ' that he did not dehght in that learn- 
ing, because he did not believe they were true ; ' for which reason I found 
lie had very much turned his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into 
the lives of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, ' the Seven Cham- 
pions,' and other historians of that age. I could not but observe the satis- 
faction the father took in the forwardness of his son, and that these 
diversions might turn to some profit. I found the boy had made remarks 
which might be of service to him during the course of his whole life. He 
would tell you the mismanagement of John Hickerthrift, find fault with 
the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, and loved St. George for 
being the champion of England ; and by this means had his thoughts in- 
sensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and honor. I was 
extolling his accomplishments, when his mother told me ' that tlic little 
girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he. 
Betty,' said she, ' deals ciiiefly in fairies and sprights ; and sometimes in a 
winter night will terrify the maids with her accounts, until they are afraid 
to go up to bed.' 

" I sat with them until it was very late, sometimes in merry, sometimes 
in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure, which gives the only 
true relish to all conversation, a sense that every one of us liked each 
other. I went home, considering the different conditions of a married life 
and that of a bachelor; and I must confess it struck me with a secret 
concern, to reflect, that whenever I go off I shall leave no traces behind 
me. In this pensive mood I return to my family ; that is to say, to my 
maid, my dog, my cat, who only can be the better or worse for what 
happens to me." — Tht TatUr, 



Ifi2 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

conspirac}^ broke up ; and a golden opportunity came to Dick 
Steele, whose hand, alas, was too careless to gripe it. 

Steele married twice ; and outlived his places, his schemes, 
his wife, his income, his health, and almost ever3'thing but his 
kind heart. That ceased to trouble him in 1729, when he died, 
worn out and almost forgotten b}" his contemporaries, in Wales, 
where he had the remnant of a propert3\ 

Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature ; all 
women especiall}" are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was 
the first of our writers who reall}' seemed to admire and respect 
them. Congreve the Great, who alludes to the low estimation 
in which women were held in Elizabeth's time, as a reason why 
the women of Shakspeare make so small a figure in the poet's 
dialogues, though he can himself pa}' splendid compliments to 
women, 3'et looks on them as mere instruments of gallantry, 
and destined, like the most consummate fortifications, to fall, 
after a certain time, before the arts and braver}* of the besieger, 
man. There is a letter of Swift's, entitled " Advice to a very 
Young Married Lad}'," which shows the Dean's opinion of the 
female society of his day, and that if he despised man he utterly 
scorned women too. No lady of our time could be treated by 
any man, were he ever so much a wit or Dean, in such a tone 
of insolent patronage and vulgar protection. In this perform- 
ance, Swift hardly takes pains to hide his opinion that a woman 
is a fool : tells her to read books, as if reading was a novel 
accomplishment; and informs her that ''not one gentleman's 
daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand 
her own natural tongue." Addison laughs at women equally ; 
but, with the gentleness and politeness of his nature, smiles at 
them and watches them, as if they were harmless, half-witted, 
amusing, pretty creatures, only made to be men's playthings. 
It was Steele who first began to j^ay a manly homage to their 
goodness and understanding, as well as to their tenderness and 
beauty.* In his comedies, the heroes do not rant and rave 

* "As to the pursuits after affection and esteem, the fair sex are 
happy in tliis particular, that with them the one is much more nearly 
related to the other than in men. The love of a woman is inseparable 
from some esteem of her ; and as she is naturally the object of affection, 
the woman who has your esteem has also some degree of your love. A 
man that dotes on a woman for her beauty, will whisper his friend, ' That 
creature has a great deal of wit when you are well acquainted witli her.' 
And if you examine the bottom of your esteem for a woman, you will find 
you have a greater opinion of her beauty than anybody else. As to us 
men, I design to pass most of my time with the facetious Harry Bickerstaff ; 
but William Bickerstaff, the most prudent man of our family, shall be my 
executor." — Tatler, No. 200. 



STEELE. 183 

aoout the di-sane beauties of Gloriana or Statira, as the char- 
acters were made to do in the chivahy romances and tlie high- 
flown dramas just going out of vogue ; but Steele admires 
women's virtue, acknowledges their sense, and adores their 
purity and beauty, with an ardor and strength which should 
win the good-will of all women to their heartj^ and respectful 
champion. It is this ardor, this respect, this manhness, which 
makes his comedies so pleasant and their heroes such fine gen- 
tlemen. He paid the finest compliment to a woman that per- 
haps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom Congreve had 
also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that " to have loved 
her was a liberal education." " How often," he says, dedi- 
cating a volume to his wife, " how often has your tenderness 
removed pain from my sick head, how often anguish from my 
aflaicted heart ! If there are such beings as guardian angels, 
they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be 
more good in inclination, or more charming in form than m}^ 
wife." His breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when 
he meets with a good and beautiful woman, and it is with his 
heart as well as with his hat that he salutes her. About chil- 
dren, and all that relates to home, he is not less tender, and 
more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his softness. 
He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. 
It is that which gives his works their worth and his style its 
charm. It, like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders ; 
and redeemed, like that, by his sweet and compassionate 
nature. 

We possess of poor Steele's wild and chequered life some of 
the most curious memoranda that ever were left of a man's 
biography.* Most men's letters, from Cicero down to Walpole, 

* The Correspondence of Steele p.assed after his death into the posses- 
sion of his daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife, Miss Scurlock, of Car- 
marthenshire. She married the Hon. John, afterwards third Lord Trevor. 
At her death, part of the letters passed to Mr. Thomas, a grandson of a 
natural daughter of Steele's ; and part to Lady Trevor's next of kin, Mr. 
Scurlock. They were published by the learned Nichols — from whose 
later edition of them, in 1809, our specimens are quoted. 

Here we have him, in his courtship — which was not a very long 
one : — 

" To Mrs. Scurlock. 

" Aug. 30, 1707. 

" Madam, — I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced 
to write from a coffee-house, where I am attending about business. There 
is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me, talking of money ; while all 
my ambition, all my wealth, is love! Love which animates my heart, 
•weetens my humor, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of m^ life. 



184 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

or down to the great men of our own time, if 3'ou will, are doc- 
tored compositions, and written with an eye suspicious towards 

It is to my lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are continually 
affixed to my words and actions ; it is the natural effect of that generous 
passion to create in the admirer some similitude of the object admired. 
Thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion. 
Look up, my fair one, to that Heaven which made thee such ; and join 
with me to implore its influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech 
the Author of love to bless the rites He has ordained — and mingle with 
our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation to 
His will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavor to please 
Him and each other. 

" I am for ever your faithful servant, 

" Rich. Steele." 

Some few hours afterwards, apparently, Mistress Scurlock received tha 
next one — obviously written later in the day : — 

" Saturday night (Aug. 30, 1707). 
" Dear, Lovely Mrs. Scdrlock, — I have been in very good com- 
pany, where your health, under the character of the woman I loved best, has 
been often drunk ; so that I may say that I am dead drunk for j-our sake; 
which is more than / die for you. Rich. Steele." 

"To Mrs. Scurlock. 

•' Sept. 1, 1707. 

"Madam, — It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet 
attend business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I must 
lock myself up, or other people will do it for me. 

'•'A gentleman asked me this morning, ' What news from Lisbon ? ' and 
I answered, ' She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know 
' when I had last been at Hampton Court 1 ' I replied, ' It will be on Tues- 
day come se'nnight.' Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before 
that day, that my mind may be in some composure. Love ! 

* A thousand torments dwell about thee, 
Yet who could live, to live without thee ? ' 

" Methinks I could write a volume to you ; but all the language on earth 
would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, 

" I am ever yours, 

"Rich. Steele." 

Two days after this, he is found expounding his circumstances and 
prospects to the young lady's mamma. He dates from " Lord Sunder- 
land's office, Whitehall ; " and states his clear income at 1,025/. per annum. 
"I promise myself," says he, "the pleasure of an industrious and virtuous 
life, in studying to do things agreeable to you." 

They were married, according to the most probable conjectures, about 
the 7th Sept. There are traces of a tiff about the middle of the next 
month ; she being prudish and fidgety, as he was impassioned and reckless. 
General progress, however, may be seen from the following notes. The 
" house in Bury Street, St. James's," was now taken. 

" To Mrs. Steele. 

" Oct. 16, 1707. 
" Dearest Being on Earth, — Pardon me if you do not see me till 
eleven o'clock, having met a school-fellow from India, by \vhom I am to be 



STEELE. 185 

posterity. That dedication of Steele's to his wife is an artifi- 
cial performance, possibly ; at least, it is written with that 

informed on things this night which expressly concern your obedient hus- 
band, Rich. Steele." 

" To Mrs. Steele. 

" Eight o'clock, Fountain Tavern, 
Oct. 22, 1707. 

" Mt Dear, — I beg of you not to be uneasy ; for I have done a great 
deal of business to-day very successfully, and wait an hour or two about 
my Gazette." 

" Dec. 22, 1707. 
" My dear, dear Wife, — I write to let you know I do not come home 
to dinner, being obliged to attend some business abroad, of which I shall 
give you an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your 
dutiful and obedient husband." 

" Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, 
Jan. 3, 1707-8. 
"Dear Prue, — I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and 
inclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home 
to dinner. I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment care- 
less more. Your faithful husband," &c. 

"Jan. 14, 1707-8. 
" Dear Wife, — Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr, Lumley have 
desired me to sit an hour with them at the 'George,' in Pall Mall, for 
which I desire your patience till twelve o'clock, and that you will go to 
bed," &c. 

" Gray's Inn. Feb. 3, 1708. 
" Dear Prue, — If the man who has my shoemaker's bill calls, let him 
be answered tliat I shall call on him as I come home. I stay here in order 
to get Jonson to discount a bill for me, and shall dine with him for that 
end. He is expected at home every minute. 

"Your most humble, obedient servant," &c. 

" Tennis-court, Coffee-house, May 5, 1708. 

" Dear Wife, — I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to 
you ; in the meantime shall lie this night at a baker's, one Leg, over against 
the 'Devil Tavern,' at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront the fools 
who wish me uneasy, and shall have the satisfaction to see thee cheerful 
and at ease. 

" If the printer's boy be at home, send him hither ; and let Mrs. Todd 
send by the boy my night-gown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall hear 
from me early in the morning," &c. 

Dozens of similar letters follow, with occasional guineas, little parcels 
of tea, or walnuts, &c. In 1709 the Taller made its appearance. The fol- 
lowing curious note dates April 7th, 1710 : — 

"I inclose to you [' Dear Prue '] a receipt for the saucepan and spoon, 
and a note of 23/. of Lewis's, which will make up the 50/. I promised for 
your ensuing occasion. 

" I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to the 



186 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

degree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement 
for the House, or a poet emplo3's in preparing a sentiment in 
verse or for the stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick 
Steele's to his wife, which that thrift}' woman preserved accu- 
ratel}-, and which could have been written but for her and her 
alone. They contain details of the business, pleasures, quarrels, 
reconciliations of the pair ; they have all the genuineness of 
conversations ; the}' are as artless as a child's prattle, and as 
confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the 
printing-office, where he is waiting for the proof-sheets of his 
Gazette, or his Tatler ; some are written from the tavern, whence 
he promises to come to his wife " within a pint of wine," and 
where he has given a rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender : 
some are composed in a high state of vinous excitement, when 
his head is flustered with burgundy, and his heart abounds with 
amorous warmth for his darlins; Prue : some are under the 
influence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning : 
some, alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have 
impounded him, and where he is waiting for bail. You trace 
many years of the poor fellow's career in these letters. In 
September, 1707, from which day she began to save the letter.5, 
he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You have his 
passionate protestations to the lady ; his respectful proposals 
to her mamma ; his private prayer to Heaven when the union 
so ardently desired was completed ; his fond professions of 
contrition and promises of amendment, when, immediately 
after his marriage there began to be just cause for the one and 
need for the other. 

Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their marriage, 
" the third door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street," 
and the next year he presented his wife with a country-house 
at Hampton. It appears she had a chariot and pair, and some- 
times four horses : he himself enjoyed a little horse for his own 
riding. He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty pounds 
a year, and always went abroad in a laced coat and a large 
black buckled periwig, that must have cost somebody fifty 

pleasure I have in yowT person and society. I only beg of you to add to 
your other charms a tearfulness to see a man that loves you in pain and un- 
easiness, to make me as happy as it is possible to be in this life. Rising a 
little in a morning, -and being disposed to a cheerfulness .... would 
not be amiss." 

In another, he is found excusing his coming home, being " invited to 
supper to Mr. Boyle's." " Dear Prue," he says on this occasion, " do not 
send after me, for I shall be ridiculous." 



STEELE. 187 

guineas. He was rather a well-to-do gentleman, Captain 
Steele, with the proceeds of his estates in Barbadoes (left to 
him by his first wife), his income as a writer of the Gazette^ and 
his office of gentleman waiter to his Ro3'al Highness Prince 
George. His second wife brought him a fortune too. But it 
is melanchol}' to relate, that with these houses and chariots 
and horses and income, the Captain was constantly in want of 
money, for which his beloved bride w^as asking as constantly. 
In the course of a few pages we begin to find the shoemaker 
calling for money, and some directions from the Captain, who 
has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife, " the beau- 
tifuUest object in the world," as he calls her, and evidentl}' in 
reply to applications of her own, which have gone the wa}^ of 
all waste paper, and lighted Dick's pipes, which were smoked a 
hundred and forty years ago — he sends his wife now a guinea, 
then a half-guinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound 
of tea ; and again no monc}' and no tea at all, but a promise 
that his darling Prue shall have some in a day or two : or a 
request, perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and 
sliaving-plate to the temporary lodging where the nomadic 
Captain is lying, hidden from the bailiff's. Oh ! that a Chris- 
tian hero and late Captain in Lucas's should be afraid of a dirty 
sheriffs officer ! That the pink and pride of chivalry should 
turn pale before a writ ! It stands to record in poor Dick's 
own handwriting — the queer collection is preserved at the 
British Museum to this present day — that the rent of the nup- 
tial house in Jerm3'n Street, sacred to unutterable tenderness 
and Prue, and three doors from Bury Street, was not paid until 
after the landlord had put in an execution on Captain Steele's 
furniture. Addison sold the house and furniture at Hampton, 
and, after deducting the sum in which his incorrigible friend 
was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the proceeds 
of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn't in the least angry at 
Addison's summary proceeding, and I dare say was very glad 
of any sale or execution, the result of which was to give him a 
little ready money. Having a small house in Jerm3'n Street 
for which he couldn't pay, and a countrj^-house at Hampton on 
which he had borrowed money, nothing must content Captain 
Dick but the taking, in 1712, a much finer, larger, and grander 
house, in Bloomsbur}^ Square ; where his unhappy landlord got 
no better satisfaction than his friend in St. James's, and where 
it is recorded that Dick, giving a grand entertainment, had a 
half-dozen queer-looking fellows in liver}^ to wait upon his noble 
guests, and confessed that his servants were bailiff's to a man. 



188 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

"I fared like a, distressed prince,"' the kindh' prodigal writes, 
generously complimenting Addison for his assistance in the 
Taller, — ''I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a 
powerful neighbor to his aid. 1 was undone l\y m^' auxiliary ; 
wlien I had once called him in, I could not subsist without 
dependence on him." Poor, needy Prince of Bloomsbury ! 
think of him in his [jalace, with his allies from Chancer}- Lane 
ominously "uardino" him. 

All sorts of stories are told indicative of his recklessness 
and ills ""ood humor. One narrated by Dr. Hoadlv is exceed- 
ingly characteristic ; it shows the life of the time : and our poor 
frientl very weak, but very kind both in and out of his cups. 

"■ My lather," says Dr. John Hoadh', the Bishop's son, 
" when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of 
the Whig meetings, held at the ' Trumpet,' in Shire Lane, wlien 
Sir Richard, in liis zeal, rather exposed himself, having the 
double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the im- 
mortal memory of King AVilliam, it being the 4th November, 
as to drink liis friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose 
phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by tliKt 
time. Steele was not fit for it. Two remarkable circum- 
stances happened. John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, 
was in the house; and John, pretty mellow, took it into his 
head to come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of 
ale in his hand to drink off to the immortal memory^ and to 
return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, 
whispered him — Do laur/Ji. It is humanity to laugh. Sir Rich- 
ard, in the evening, being too much in the same condition, was 
put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him 
but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor's, late as it was. 
However, the chairmen carried him liome, and got him up stairs, 
when his great complaisance would wait on them down stairs, 
which he did, and then was got quieth' to bed." * 

There is another amusing story which, I believe, that re- 
nowned collector, Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have 
incorporated into their work. Sir Richard Steele, at a time 
wdien he was much occupied with theatrical affairs, built him- 
self a pretty private theatre, and, before it was opened to his 
friends and guests, was anxious to try whether the hall was 
well adapted for hearing. Accordingly he placed himself in the 

* Of liis famous Bishop, Steele wrote, — 

" yirtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 
All faults he pardons, though he none commit*." 



STEELE. 189 

most remote part of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who 
had built the house to speak up from the stage. Tlie man at 
first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking, and 
did not know what to sa}' to his honor ; but the good-natured 
knight called out to him to sa^- whatever was uppermost ; and, 
after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly 
audible: ''Sir Richard Steele!" he said, "for three months 
past me and mv men has been a working in this tlieatre, and 
we've never seen the color of 3-our honor's mone^- : we will be 
ver}' mucli obliged if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we 
won't drive in another nail." Sir Richard said that liis friend's 
elocution was perfect, but that he didn't like his subject much. 

The great charm of Steele's writing is its naturalness. He 
wrote so quickly and carelessly, that he was Ibrced to make 
the reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. 
He had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance 
with the world. He had known men and taverns. He had 
lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentlemen ushers of 
the Court, with men and women of fashion ; with authors and 
wits, with the inmates of the spunging-houses, and with the 
frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He 
was liked in all compan}' because he liked it ; and you like to 
see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a boxful of 
children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones 
of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary ; on 
the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who 
ever wrote ; and full of heart}' applause and sj-mpatln', wins 
upon 3'ou b}' calling you to share his delight and good humor. 
His laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been 
invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried as much as the most 
tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty 
and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakspeare 
afl^ectionately, and more than an^- man of his time ; and, ac- 
cording to his generous expansive nature, called upon all his 
company to like what he liked himself. He did not damn with 
faint praise : he was in the world and of it ; and his enjoyment 
of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift's savage indigna- 
tion and Addison's lonely serenity.* Permit me to read to you 

* Here we have some of his later letters : — 

" To Lady Steele. 

" Hampton Court, March 16, 1716-17. 
" Dear Prue, — If you have written anything to me which I should 
have received last night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the 



190 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

a passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar 
humor : the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. 
We have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling 
and the most solemn, the humorist takes upon himself to com- 
ment. All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of 
Swift, in which he hints at his philosophy and describes the 
end of mankind : — * 

next post .... Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed 
in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. 
He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is 
also a very great scholar : he can read his primer ; and I have brought 
down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We 
are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged; 
and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, 
or what Mrs. Evans and I shall think for his service." 

" To Lady Steele. 

[Undated.] 

** You tell me you want a little flattery from me. I assure you I know- 
no one who deserves so much commendation as yourself, and to whom say- 
ing the best things would be so little like flattery. The thing speaks for 
itself, considering you as a very handsome woman that loves retirement — 
one who does not want wit, and yet is extremely sincere ; and so I could go 
through all the vices which attend the good qualities of other people, of 
which you are exempt. But, indeed, though you have every perfection, 
you have an extravagant fault, which almost frustrates the good in you to 
me ; and that is, that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even 
at my request, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride 

I have that you are mine 

" Your most affectionate, obsequious husband, 

" Richard Steele. 

"A quarter of Molly's schooling is paid. The children are perfectly 
well." 

" To Lady Steele. 

" March 26, 1717. 

" My dearest Prue, — I have received yours, wherein you give me 
the sensible affliction of telling me enow of the continual pain in your head. 
.... When I lay in your place, and on your pillow, I assure you I fell 
into tears last night, to think that my charming little insolent might be then 
awake and in pain ; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep. 

" For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your 
Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher " 

At the time when the above later letters were written, Lady Steele was 
in Wales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was 
much occupied with a project for conveying fish alive, by which, as he con- 
stantly assures his wife, he firmly believed he should make his fortune. It 
did not succeed, however. 

Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried 
in Westminster Abbey. 

* Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic 
letter. 



STEELE. 191 

** Amazed, confused, its fate unknown, 
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne ; 
While each pale sinner hung his head, 
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said : 

' Offending race of human kind, 
By nature, reason, learning, blind ; 
You who through frailty stepped aside, 
And you who never err'd through pride ; 
You who in different sects were shamm'd, 
And come to see each other damn'd ; 
(So some folk told you, but they knew 
No more of Jove's designs than you ;) 
The world's mad business now is o'er. 
And I resent your freaks no more ; 
/ to such blockheads set my wit, 
I damn such fools — go, go, you're bit ! ' " 

• 

Addison, speaking on the veiy same theme, but with how 
different a voice, saj'S, in his famous paper on Westminster 
Abbey {Spectator^ No. 26) : — " For my own part, though I am 
always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and 
can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn 
scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gaj^ and delightful 
ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, ever}' emotion 
of env}^ dies within me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beau- 
tiful, every inordinate desire goes out ; when I meet with the 
grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compas- 
sion ; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I con- 
sider the vanit}' of grieving for those we must quickly follow.'* 
(I have owned that I do not think Addison's heart melted very 
much, or that he indulged ver}- inordinately in the " vanit}' of 
grieving.") " When," he goes on, " when I see kings lying by 
those who deposed them : when I consider rival wits placed 
side by side, or the hoi}" men that divided the world with their 
contests and disputes, — I reflect with sorrow and astonish- 
ment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of man- 
kind. And, when I read the several dates on the tombs of 
some that died j^esterday and some 600 years ago, I consider that 
Oreat Day when we shall all of us be coutemporaries, and 
make our appearance together." 

Our third humorist comes to speak upon the same subject. 
You will have observed in the previous extracts the character- 
istic humor of each writer — the subject and the contrast — 
the fact of Death, and the play of individual thought, by which 
each comments on it, and now hear the third writer — death, 
sorrow, and the grave being for the moment also his theme. 
"The first sense of sorrow I ever knew," Steele says in the 



192 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Tatler^ " was upon the death of my father, at which time I was 
not quite five 3-ears of age : but was rather amazed at what all 
the house meant, than possessed of a real understanding whj* 
nobodj' would play with us. I remember I went into the 
room where his hocly la}- , and m}^ mother sat weeping alone b}' 
it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the 
coffin, and calling papa ; for, I know not how, I had some idea 
that he was locked up there. My mother caught me in her 
arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief 
she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces, 
and told me in a flood of tears, ' Papa could not hear me, and 
would pla}' with me no more : for they were going to put him 
under ground, whence he would never come to us again.' 
She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there 
was a dignit}' in her grief amidst all the wildness of her trans- 
port, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow 
that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my 
very soul, and has made pit}' the weakness of m^- heart ever 
since." 

Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and 
men? " Fools, do 3'ou know anything of this m3'ster3'?" sa3's 
Swift, stamping on a grave, and carr3ing his scorn for man- 
kind actuall3' beyond it. "Miserable, purblind wretches, how 
dare 3'ou to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how 
can 3'our dim e3'es pierce the unfathomable depths of 3'onder 
boundless heaven?" Addison, in a much kinder language and 
gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment : and speaks of 
the rivahy of wits, and the contests of hoi}' men, with the same 
sceptic placidity. "Look what a little vain dust we are," he 
sa3^s, smiling over the tombstones ; and catching, as is his wont, 
quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks, in 
words of inspiration almost, of " the Great Da3'', when we shall 
all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance to- 
gether." 

The third, whose theme is death, too, and who will speak 
his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads 3'ou up to his 
father's coffin, and shows you his beautiful mother weeping, 
and himself an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. 
His own natural tears flow as he takes 3'our hand and confid- 
ingl3^ asks 3^our sympath3^ " See how good and innocent and 
beautiful women are," he sa3's ; " how tender little children! 
Let us love these and one another, brother — God knows- we 
have need of love and pardon." So it is each man looks with 



STEELE. 193 

/lis own ej-es, speaks with his own voice, and pra3's his own 
I)ra3'er. 

When Steele asks 3*our s.ympathy for the actors in that 
charming scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse 
it? One yields to it as to the frank advance of a child, or to 
the appeal of a woman. A man is seldom more manl}^ than 
when he is what vou call unmanned — the source of his emo- 
tion is championship, pity, and courage ; the instinctive desire 
to cherish those who are innocent and unhapp}', and defend 
those who are tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he 
is nothing:. He is bv no means the most brilliant of wits nor 
the deepest of thinkers : but he is our friend ; we love him, as 
cliildren love their love with an A, because he is amiable. 
Who likes a man best because he is the cleverest or the wisest 
of mankind ; or a woman because she is the most virtuous, or 
talks French, or pla3's the piano better than the rest of her 
sex? I own to liking Dick Steele the man, and Dick Steele 
the author, much better than much better men and much better 
authors. 

The misfortune regarding Steele is, that most part of the 
company here present must take his amiabilit3' upon hearsa3^, 
and certainly can't make his intimate acquaintance. Not that 
Steele was worse than his time ; on the contraiy, a far better, 
truer, and higher-hearted man than most who lived in it. But 
things were done in that societ3', and names were named, which 
would make you shudder now. What would be the sensation 
of a polite 3'outh of the present day, if at a ball he saw the 
3-oung object of his affections taking a box out of her pocket and 
a pinch of snuff ; or if at dinner, 1)3^ the charmer's side, she de- 
liberately put her knife into her mouth? If she cut her mother's 
throat with it, mamma would scarcel3" be more shocked. I 
allude to these peculiarities of b3'gone times as an excuse for 
m3' favorite, Steele, who was not worse, and often much more 
delicate than his neio'hbors. 

There exists a curious document descriptive of the manners 
of the last age, which describes most minutely the amusements 
and occupations of persons of fashion in London at the time of 
which we are speaking ; the time of Swift, and Addison, and 
Steele. 

When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, 
the immortal personages of Swift's polite conversation, came 
to breakfast with 1113^ Lad3' Smart, at eleven o'clock in the 
morning, 1113' Lord Smart was absent at the levee. His .lord- 
ship was at home to dinner at three o'clock to receive his 

13 



194 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

guests ; and we may sit down to this meal, like the Barmecide's, 
and see thejTops of the last century before us. Seven of them 
sat down at dinner, and were joined by a countr}' baronet who 
told them they kept court hours. These persons of fashion 
began their dinner with a sirloin of beef, fish, a shoulder of 
veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart carved the sirloin, mj^ 
Lad}^ Answerall helped the fish, and the gallant Colonel cut 
the shoulder of veal. All made a considerable inroad on the 
sirloin and the shoulder of veal with the exception of Sir John, 
who had no appetite, having already partaken of a beefsteak 
and two mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March beer as soon 
as he got out of bed. The}' drank claret, which the master of 
the house said should alwa3's be drunk after fish ; and my Lord 
Smart particularly recommended some excellent cider to my 
Lord Sparkish, which occasioned some brilliant remarks from 
that nobleman. When the host called for wine, he nodded to 
one or other of his guests, and said, " Tom Neverout, ray ser- 
vice to 3'ou.'* 

After the first course came almond-pudding, fritters, which 
the Colonel took with his hands out of the dish, in order to 
help the brilliant Miss Notable ; chickens, black puddings, and 
soup ; and Lady Smart, the elegant mistress of the mansion, 
finding a skewer in a dish, placed it in her plate with directions 
that it should be carried down to the cook and dressed for the 
cook's own dinner. Wine and small beer were drunk during 
this second course ; and when the Colonel called for beer, he 
called the butler Friend, and asked whether the beer was good. 
Various jocular remarks passed from the gentlefolks to the ser- 
vants ; at breakfast several persons had a word and a joke for 
Mrs. Bett}', m}' lad3''s maid, who warmed the cream and had 
charge of the canister (the tea cost thirt}' shillings a pound in 
those days). When m}^ Lad\' Sparkish sent her footman out 
to ni}' Lad}'^ Match to come at six o'clock and pla}' at quadrille, 
her ladj'ship warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell 
by the wa}' not to stay to get up again. And when the gentle- 
man asked the hall-porter if his lady was at home, that func- 
tionary replied, with manl}- waggishness, " She was at home 
just now, but she's not gone out yet." 

After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters and soup, 
oame the third course, of which the chief dish was a hot venison 
past}"-, which was j^ut before Lord Smart, and carved b}^ that 
nobleman. Besides the pasty, there was a hare, a rabbit, some 
pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer and wine were 
freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen always pledg- 



STEELE. 195 

ing somebody with every glass which they drank ; and by this 
time the conversation between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable 
had grown so brisk and livel}^ that the Derbyshire baronet be- 
gan to think the 3'oung gentlewoman was Tom's sweetheart ; 
on which Miss remarked, that she loved Tom " like pie." After 
the goose, some of the gentlemen took a dram of brand}', 
"which was ver}' good for the wholesomes," Sir John said; 
and now having had a tolerably substantial dinner, honest 
Lord Smart bade the butler bring up the great tankard full of 
October to Sir John. The great tankard was passed from hand 
to hand and mouth to mouth, but when pressed b}^ the noble 
host upon the gallant Tom Neverout, he said, '* No, faith, my 
lord ; I like 3'our wine, and won't put a churl upon a gentle- 
man. Your honor's claret is good enough for me." And so, 
the dinner over, the host said, " Hang saving, bring us up a 
ha'porth of cheese." 

The cloth was now taken awa}', and a bottle of burgundy 
was set down, of which the ladies were invited to partake be- 
fore they went to their tea. When the}^ withdrew, the gentlemen 
promised to join them in an hour : fresh bottles were brought ; 
the "dead men," meaning the empty bottles, removed; and 
" D'you hear, John? bring clean glasses," my Lord Smart 
said. On which the gallant Colonel Alwit said, " I'll keep m}^ 
glass ; for wine is the best liquor to wash glasses in." 

After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then they 
all sat and played quadrille until three o'clock in the morning, 
when the chairs and the flambeaux came, and this noble com- 
pany went to bed. 

Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw 
no inference from this queer picture — let all moralists here 
present deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that 
society in which a lady of fashion joked with a footman, and 
carved a sirloin, and provided besides a great shoulder of veal, 
a goose, hare, rabbit, chickens, partridges, black puddings, and 
a ham for a dinner for eight Christians. What — what could 
have been the condition of that polite world in which people 
openly ate goose after almond-pudding, and took their soup in 
the middle of dinner? Fancy a Colonel in the Guards putting 
his hand into a dish of heignets dJahricot^ and helping his neigh- 
bor, a 3'oung lad}^ du monde I Fanc}' a noble lord calling out 
to the sei'vants, before the ladies at his table, " Hang expense, 
bring us a ha'porth of cheese ! " Such were the ladies of Saint 
James's — such were the frequenters of ' ' White's Chocolate- 
House," when Swift used to visit it, and Steele described it as 



196 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, a hundred 
and forty years ago ! 

Dennis, who ran amuck at the literary society of his day, 
falls foul of poor Steele, and thus depicts him: — '' Sir John 

Edgar, of the count}" of in Ireland, is of a middle stature, 

broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of some- 
bod}' over a farmer's chimne}' — a short chin, a short nose, a 
short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance. 
Yet with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty 
that he took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more mor- 
tified at being told that he was ugly, than he was by an}" reflec- 
tion made upon his honor or understanding. 

" He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honorable 
family ; certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors flour- 
ished in Tipperary long before the English ever set foot in 
Ireland. He has testimony of this more authentic than the 
Herald's Office, or any human testimony. For God has marked 
him more abundantly than he did Cain, and stamped his native 
country on his face, his understanding, his writings, his actions, 
his passions, and, above all, his vanity. The Hibernian brogue 
is still upon all these, though long habit and length of days 
have worn it ofl" his tonojue." * 



'O' 



* Steele replied to Dennis in an " Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, 
called the Character of Sir John Edgar." What Steele had to say against 
the cross-grained old Critic discovers a great deal of humor : — 

" Thou never didst let the sun into thy garret, for fear he should bring 
a bailiff along with him 

" Your years are about sixty-five, an ugly, vinegar face, tliat if you had 
any command you would be obeyed out of fear, from your ill-nature pic- 
tured there ; not from any other motive. Your height is about some five 
feet five inches. You see I can give your exact measure as well as if I 
had taken your dimension with a good cudgel, which I promise you to do 

as soon as ever I have the good fortune to meet you 

j " Your doughty paunch stands before you like a firkin of butter, and 
.your duck legs seem to be cast for carrying burdens. 

' " Thy works are libels upon others, and satires upon thyself; and while 
•' tliey bark at men of sense, call him knave and fool that wrote them. Thou 
hast a great antipathy to thy own species; and hatest the sight of a fool 
but in tliy glass." 

Steele had been kind to Dennis, and once got arrested on account of a 
pecuniary service which he did him. When John heard of the fact — 
*' S'death! " cries John ; " why did not he keep out of the way as I did ? " 

The " Answer " concludes by mentioning that Cibber had offered Ten 
Pounds for the discovery of the authorship of Dennis's pamphlet; on 
which, says Steele, — "I am only sorry he has offered so much, because 
the tiventieth part would have over-valued his whole carcass. But I know 
the fellow that he keeps to give answers to his creditors will betray him ; 
for he gave me his word to bring officers on the top of the house that 



STEELE. 197 

Although this portrait is the work of a man who was neither 
the friend of Steele nor of any other man alive, yet there is a 
ch'eadful resemblance to the original in the savage and exag- 
gerated traits of the caricature, and ever3'body who knows him 
must recognize Dick Steele. Dick set about almost all the 
undertakings of his life with inadequate means, and, as he took 
and furnished a house with the most generous intentions towards 
his friends, the most tender gallantry towards his wife, and 
with this only drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay 
the rent when quarter-day came, — so, in his life he proposed 
to himself the most magnificent schemes of virtue, forbearance, 
public and private good, and the advancement of his own and 
the national religion ; but when he had to pay for these articles 
— so difficult to purchase and so costly to maintain — poor 
Dick's monev was not forthcomino^ : and when Virtue called 
with her little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he could 
not see her that morning, having a headache from being tipsy 
over-night ; or when stern Duty rapped at the door with his 
account, Dick was absent and not ready to pay. He was 
shirking at the tavern ; or had some particular business (of 
somebodj^'s else) at the ordinary : or he was in hiding, or 
worse than in hiding, in the lock-up house. What a situation 
for a man ! — for a philanthropist — for a lover of right and 
truth — for a magnificent designer and schemer ! Not to dare 
to look in the face the Religion which he adored and which he 
had offended : to have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so 
as to avoid the friend whom he loved and who had trusted him ; 
to have the house which he had intended for his wife, whom he 
loved passionately, and for her ladyship's company which he 
wished to entertain splendidl}^ in the possession of a bailiff's 
man ; with a crowd of little creditors, — grocers, butchers, and 
small-coal men — fingering round the door with their bills and 
jeering at him. Alas ! for poor Dick Steele ! For nobod}' else, 
of course. There is no man or woman in our time who makes 
fine projects and gives them up from idleness or want of means. 
When Duty calls upon ms, we no doubt are always at home and 
ready to pay that grim tax-gatherer. When we are stricken 

should make a hole through the ceiling of his garret, and so bring him to 
the punishment he deserves. Some people thinlc this expedient out of the 
way, and that he would make his escape upon hearing the least noise. I 
say so too; but it takes hira up half an hour every night to fortify himself 
with his old hair trunk, two or three joint-stools, and" some other lumber, 
which he ties together with cords so fast that it takes him up the same 
time in the morning to release himself." 



198 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

with remorse and promise reform, we keep our promise, and 
are never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are 
no chambers in our hearts, destined for family friends and 
affections, and now occupied b}^ some Sin's emissary and bailiff 
in possession. There are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, 
importunate remembrances, or disappointed holders of our 
promises to reform, hovering at our steps, or knocking at our 
door ! Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth century ; 
and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into 
jail and out again, and sinned and repented, and loved and 
suffered, and lived and died, scores of years ago. Peace be 
with him ! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle : let 
us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with 
human kindness. 



PRIOE, GAY, AND POPE. 



Matthew Prior was one of those famous and lucky wits 
of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it be- 
hoves us not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of 
no small genius, good nature and acumen.* He loved, he 

* Gay calls him — " Dear Prior .... beloved by every muse." — Mr. 
Pope's Welcome from Greece. 

Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently mentioned in 
the "Journal to Stella." "Mr. Prior," says Swift, "walks to make him- 
self fat, and I to keep myself down We of ten walk round the park 

together." 

In Swift's works there is a curious tract called " Remarks on the 
Characters of the Court of Queen Anne " [Scott's edition, vol. xii.] The 
" Remarks " are not by the Dean ; but at the end of each is an addition in 
italics from his hand, and these are always characteristic. Thus, to the 
Duke of Marlborough, he adds, " Detestably covetous," &c. Prior is thus 
noticed — 

" Matthew Prior, Esq., Commissioner of Trade. 

" On the Queen's accession to the throne, he was continued in his office ; 
is very well at court with the ministry, and is an entire creature of my 
Lord Jersey's, whom he supports by his advice ; is one of the l)est poets in 
England, but very facetious in conversation. A thin, hollow-looked man, 
turned of forty years old. This is near the truth." 

" Yet counting as far as to fifty his years. 

His virtues and vices were as other men's are. 
High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears, 
In a life party-colored — half pleasure, half care. 

" Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave, 
He strove to make interest and freedom agree ; 
In public employments industrious and grave, 
And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he! 



^00 EK'GLISH HUMORISTS. 

drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his Ijrics, 
''in a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night ; on his left hand, 
his Horace, and a friend on his right, " going out of town 
from the Hague to pass that evening, and the ensuing Sunda}', 
boozing at a Spielhaus with his companions, perhaps bobbing 
for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and 
with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master the charms 
of his idleness, his retreat," and his Batavian Chloe. A vint- 
ner's son in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of 
the Rod, Prior attracted some notice b}^ writing verses at 
St. John's College, Cambridge, and, coming up to town, aided 
Montague * in an attack on the noble old English lion John Dry- 
den ; in ridicule of whose work, " The Hind and the Panther," 
he brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, "The 
Town and Country Mouse.'* Aren't you all acquainted with 
it ? HaA^e 3'ou not all got it by heart ? What ! have you never 
heard of it? See what fame is made of! The wonderful part 
of the satire was, that, as a natural consequence of "The 
Town and Countrv Mouse," Matthew Prior was made Secre- 
tary of Embassy at the Hague ! I believe it is dancing, rather 
than singing, which distinguishes the 3'oung English diploma- 
tists of the present da}' ; and have seen them in various parts 
perform that part of their dut}'^ verj^ finel}'. In Prior's time it 
appears a different accomplishment led to preferment. Could 
3'ou write a cop}' of Alcaics? that was the question. Could 
you turn out a neat epigram or two? Coukl 3'ou compose 
"The Town and Country Mouse ? " It is manifest that, by 
the possession of this facult}', the most difficult treaties, the 
laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own, are 
easih' understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and 
said good things that proved his sense and his spirit. When 
the apartments at Versailles were shown to him, with the vic- 
tories of Louis XIV. painted on the walls, and Prior was 
asked whether the palace of the King of England had any 

" Now in equipage stately, now humble on foot, 

Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust ; 
And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about, 

He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust." 

Prior's Poems. \For my own monument.\ 

* " They joined to produce a parody, entitled ' The Town and Country 
Mouse,' part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends, 
Smart and Jolmson, by repeating to them. The piece is therefore founded 
upon the twice-told jest of the ' Rehearsal.' . . . There is nothing new or 
original in the idea. ... In this piece. Prior, though the younger man, 
seems to have had by far the largest share." — Scott's Lh-yden, vol. i. p. 330. 




QUEEN ANNE. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 201 

such clecoiations, "The monuments of mj' master's actions," 
Mat said, of William whom he cordially revered, "are to be 
seen ever3'where except in his own house." Bravo, Mat ! 
Prior rose to be full ambassador at Paris,* where he somehow 
was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate ; and in an heroic 
poem, addressed bj- him to her late lamented Majest}', Queen 
Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes 
and spoons, of which Fate had deprived him. All that he 
wants, he sa3-s, is her Majest3^'s picture ; without that he can't 
be happ3\ 

" Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore : 
Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power 
Higher to raise the glories of thy reign. 
In words sublimer and a nobler strain 
May future bards the mighty theme rehearse. 
Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, 
The votive tablet I suspend." 

With that word the poem stops abruptl3^ The votive tablet is 
suspended for ever, like Mahomet's coffin. News came that 
the Queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, 
were left there, hovering to this da3', over the votive tablet. 
The picture was never got, an 3' more than the spoons and dishes : 
the inspiration ceased, the verses were not wanted — the am- 
bassador wasn't wanted. Poor Mat was recalled from his em- 
bass3% suffered disgrace along with his patrons, lived under a 
sort of cloud ever after, and disappeared in Essex. When de- 
prived of all his pensions and emoluments, the heart)'' and gen- 
erous Oxford pensioned him. The)' pla3'ed for gallant stakes — 
the bold men of those da3's — and lived and gave splendidly. 

Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after spend- 
ing an evening with Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, would 
go off and smoke a pipe with a couple of friends of his, a soldier 

* " He was to have been in the same commission with the Duke of 
Shrewsbury, but that that nobleman," says Johnson, " refused to be asso- 
ciated with one so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without 
a title till the Duke's return next year to England, and then he assumed the 
style and dignity of ambassador." 

He had been thinking of slights of this sort when he wrote his Epi- 
taph : — 

"Nobles and heralds, by your leave, 

Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, 
The son of Adam and of Eve ; 
Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher ? " 

But, in this case, the old prejudice got the better of the old joke. 



202 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

and bis wife, in Long Acre. Those who have not read his late 
Excellency's poems should be warned that the}^ smack not a 
little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson 
speaks slightingly of his l3Tics ; but with duo deference to the 
great Samuel, Prior's seem to me amongst the easiest, the rich- 
est, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.* 
Horace is always in his mind ; and his song, and his philosophy, 
his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves and 
his Epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most delight- 
ful and accompUshed master. In reading his works, one is 
struck with their modern air, as well as by their happy similarity 
to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm. In 
his verses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that end- 
less theme to poets, the vanity of human wishes — 

" So whilst in fevered dreams we sink, 
^ And waking, taste what we desire, 

The real draught but feeds the fire. 
The dream is better than the drink. 

" Our hopes like towering falcons aim 
At objects in an airy height : 
To stand aloof and view the flight, 
Is all the pleasure of the game." 

♦ His epigrams have the genuine sparkle. 

"The Remedy worse than the Disease. 

" I sent for Radcliff ; was so ill, 

That other doctors gave me over : 
He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill, 
And I was likely to recover. 

"But when the wit began to wheeze, 

And wine had warmed the politician, 
Cured yesterday of my disease. 
I died last night of my physician." 



" Yes, every poet is a fool ; 

By demonstration Ned can show it ; 
Happy could Ned's inverted rule 
Prove every fool to be a poet." 

** On his death-bed poor Lubin lies, 
His spouse is in despair ; 
With frequent sobs and mutual cries, 
They both express their care. 

" * A different cause,' says Parson Sly, 
' The same effect may give ; 
Poor Lubin fears that he shall die, 
His wife that he may live.' " 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 203 

Would iiot 3'oii fanc}- that a poet of our own da3^s was sing- 
ing? and in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching hira 
for his inconstanc}', where he says — 

" The God of us versemen, you know, child, the Sun, 
How, after his journeys, he sets up his rest. 
If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run. 
At night he declines on his Tlietis's breast. 

" So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, 
To thee, my delight, in the evening 1 come : 
No matter what beauties I saw in my way ; 

They were but my visits, but thou art my home ! 

" Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war, 
And let us like Horace and Lydia agree : 
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her 
As he was a poet sublimer than rae." 

If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? 
Love and pleasure find singers in all daj^s. Roses are alwaj's 
blowing and fading — to-da}' as in that pretty time when Prior 
sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay — 

" She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers 
Pointing, the lovely moralist said : 
See, friend, in some few fleeting hours, , 

See yonder what a change is made ! 

" Ah me ! the blooming pride of May 
And that of Beauty are but one : 
At morn both flourish, bright and gay, 
Both fade at evening, pale and gone. 

" At dawn poor Stella danced and sung. 
The amorous youth around her bowed : 
At night her fatal knell was rung; 
I saw, and kissed her in her shroud. 

" Such as she is who died to-day. 
Such I, alas, may be to-morrow : 
Go, Damon, bid thy Muse display 
The justice of thy Chloe's sorrow." 

Damon's knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly 
on him ! Deus sit propitms Jniic potatori^ as Walter de Mapes 
sang.* Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightingly' of 

* "Prior to Sir Thomas Hanmer. 

" Aug. 4, 1709. 

" Dear Sir, — Friendship may live, I grant you, without being fed and 
cherished by correspondence ; but with that additional benefit I am of 
opinion it will look more cheerful and thrive better : for in this case, as 



204 ENGLISH HUMpRISTS. 

Prior's verses, enjo3^ed them more than he was wilUng to own. 
The old moralist had studied them as well as Mr. Thomas 

in love, though a man is sure of his own constancy, yet his happiness 
depends a good deal upon the sentiments of another, and wl)ile you and 
Chloe are alive, 'tis not enough that I love you both, except I am sure you 
botli love me again ; and as one of her scrawls fortifies my mind more 
against affliction than all Epictetus, with Simplicius's comments into the 
bargain, so your single letter gave me more real pleasure than all the works 
of Plato I must return my answer to vour very kind question con- 
cerning my health. The Bath waters have done a good deal towards the 
recovery of it, and the great specific. Cape cahallum, will, I think, confirm 
it. Upon this head I must tell you that my mare Bettj^ grows blind, and 
may one day, by breaking my neck, perfect my cure : if at liixham fair 
any pretty nagg that is between thirteen and fourteen hands presented him- 
self, and you would be pleased to purchase him for me, one of your ser- 
vants might ride him to Euston, and I might receive him there. This, sir, 
is just as such a thing happens. If you hear, too, of a Welch widow, with a 
good jointure, that has her goings and is not very skittish, pray, be pleased 
to cast your eye on her for me too. You see, sir, the great trust I repose 
in your skill and honor, when I dare put two such commissions in your 
hand. . . . " — The Hanmer Correspondence, p. 120. 

" From Mr. Prior. 

Paris, 1st -12th May, 1714. 

" Mt dear Lord and Friend, — Matthew never had so great occa- 
jsion to write a word to Henry as now : it is noised here that I am soon to 
return. The question that I wish I could answer to the many that ask, 
and to our friend Colbert de Torcy (to wliom I made your compliments in 
the manner you commanded) is, wliat is done for me; and to what I am 
recalled ? It may look like a bagatelle, wiiat is to become of a philosopher 
like me ? but it is not such : wliat is to become of a person who had the 
honor to be chosen, and sent hither as intrusted, in the midst of a war, with 
what the Queen designed should make the peace ; returning with the Lord 
Bolingbroke, one of the greatest men in England, and one of the finest 
heads in Europe (as they say here, if true or not, n'mporte) ; having been 
left by him in the greatest character (that of Her Majesty's Plenipoten- 
tiary), exercising that power conjointly with the Duke of Shrewsbury, and 
solely after his departure; having here received more distinguished honor 
than any Minister, except an Ambassador, ever did, and some which were 
never given to any but who had that character ; having had all the success 
that could be expected; having (God be thanked!) spared no pains, at a 
time when at home the peace is voted safe and honorable — at a time when 
the Earl of Oxford is Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke First Secretary 
of State? This unfortunate person, I say, neglected, forgot, unnamed to 
anything that may speak the Queen satisfied with Jiis services, or his 
friends concerned as to his fortune. 

'* Mr. de Torcy put me quite out of countenance, the other day, by a 
pity that wounded me deeper than ever did the cruelty of the late Lord 
Godolphin. He said he would write to Robin and Harry about me. God 
forbid, my lord, that I should need any foreign intercession, or owe the 
least to any Frenchman living, besides the decency of behavior and the 
returns of common civility : some say I am to go to Baden, others that I 
am to be added to the Commissioners for settling the commerce. In all 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 205 

Moore, and defended them, and showed that he remembered 
them very well too, on an occasion when their morality was 
called in question by that noted puritan, James Boswell, Esq., 
of Auchinleck.* 

In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserves to be a 
favorite, and to have a good place. f In his set all were fond 

cases I am ready, but in the meantime, dicaliquid detrihus capellis. Neither 
of these two are, I presume, honors or rewards, neither of them (let me say 
to my dear Lord Bolingbroke, and let him not be angry with me,) are what 
Drift may aspire to, and what Mr. Whitworth, who was his fellow-clerk, 
has or may possess. I am far from desiring to lessen the great merit of the 
gentleman I named, for I heartily esteem and love him ; but in this trade 
of ours, my lord, in which you are the general, as in that of the soldiery, 
tliere is a certain right acquired by time and long service. You would do 
anything for your Queen's service, but you would not be contented to de- 
scend, and be degraded to a charge, no way proportioned to that of Secretary 
of State, any more than Mr. Ross, though he would charge a party with a 
halbard in his hand, would be content all his life after to be Serjeant. Was 
my Lord Dartmouth, from Secretary, returned again to be Commissioner 
of Trade, or from Secretary of War, would Frank Gwyn think himself 
kindly used to be returned again to be Commissioner 1 In short, my lord, 
you Iiave put me above myself, and if I am to return to myself, I shall 
return to something very discontented and uneasy. I am sure, my lord, you 
will make the best use you can of this hint for my good. If I am to have 
anything, it will certainly be for Her Majesty's service, and the credit of 
my friends in the Ministry, that it be done before I am recalled from home, 
lest the world may think either that I have merited to be disgraced, or that 
ye dare not stand by me. If nothing is to be done, fiat voluntas Dei. I 
have writ to Lord Treasurer upon this subject, and having implored your 
kind intercession, I promise you it is the last remonstrance of this kind 
that I will ever make. Adieu, my lord ; all honor, health, and pleasure 
to you. Yours ever. Matt." 

"P.S. — Lady Jersey is just gone from me. We drank your healths 
together in usquebaugh after our tea : we are the greatest friends alive. 
Once more adieu. There is no such thing as the ' Book of Travels ' you 
mentioned ; if there be, let friend Tilson send us more particular account 
of them, for neither I nor Jacob Tonson can find them. Pray send Barton 
back to me, I hope with some comfortable tidings." — BoUngbroke's Letters. 

* " I asked whether Prior's poems were to be printed entire ; Johnson 
said they were. I mentioned Lord Hales's censure of Prior in his preface 
to a collection of sacred poems, by various hands, published by him at 
Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions ' these impure tales, 
which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious author.' John- 
son : ' Sir, Lord Hales has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will 
excite to lewdness. If Lord Hales thinks there is, he must be more com- 
bustible than other people.' I instanced the tale of ' Paulo Purganti and 
his wife.' Johnson : ' Sir, there is nothing there but that his wife wanted 
to be kissed, when poor Paulo was out of pocket. No, sir, Prior is a lady's 
book. No lady is ashamed to have it standing in her library.'" — Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson. 

t Gay was of an old Devonshire family, but his pecuniary prospects 
not being great, was placed in his youth in the house of a silk-mercer in 



206 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

of him. His success offended nobody. He missed a. fortune 
once or twice. He was talked of for court favor, and hoped to 
win it ; but the court favor jilted him. Craggs gave him some 
South Sea Stock ; and at one time Gay had ver}' nearh' made 
his fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him 
too : and so his friends, instead of being angry with him, and 
jealous of him, were kind and fond of honest Ga}'. In the 
portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of the last 
centur}^, Gay's face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It ap- 
pears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the full dress 
and negligee of learning, without which the painters of those 
days scarcely ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over 
his shoulder with an honest boyish glee — an artless sweet 
humor. He was so kind, so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully 
brisk at times, so dismally woe-begone at others, such a natural 
good creature that the Giants loved him. The great Swift was 
gentle and sportive with him,* as the enormous Brobdingnag 
maids of honor were with little Gulliver. He could frisk and 
fondle round Pope,t and sport, and bark, and caper, without 

London. He was born in 1688 — Pope's year, and in 1712 the Duchess of 
Monmouth made him her secretary. Next year he published his " Rural 
Sports," which he dedicated to Pope, and so made an acquaintance, whicli 
became a memorable friendship. 

" Gay," says Pope, " was quite a natural man, — wholly without art or 
design, and spoke just what he thought and as he thought it. He dangled 
for twenty years about a court, and at last was offered to be made usher 
to the young princesses. Secretary Craggs made Gay a present of stock 
in the South Sea year ; and he was once worth 20,000/., but lost it all again. 
He got about 400/. by the first ' Beggar's Opera,' and 1,100/. or 1,200/. by 
the second. He was negligent and a bad manager. Latterly, the Duke 
of Queensbury took his money into his keeping, and let him only have 
what was necessary out of it, and, as he lived with them, he could not have 
occasion for much. He died worth upwards of 3,000/." — Pope. Spence's 
Anecdotes. 

* " Mr. Gay is, in all regards, as honest and sincere a man as ever I 
knew." — Swift, To Ladti Betty Germaine, Jan. 1733. 

t " Of manners gentle, of affections mild ; 
In wit a man ; simplicity, a child ; 
With native humor temp'ring virtuous rage, 
Forra'd to delight at once and lash the age ; 
Above temptation in a low estate, 
And uncorrupted e'en among the great : 
A safe companion, and an easy friend, 
Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end. 
These are thy honors ; not that here thy bust 
Is mixed with heroes, or with kings thy dust ; 
But that the worthy and the good shall say, 
Striking their pensive bosoms, ' Here lies Gay.' " 

Pope's Epitaph on Gay. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 207 

offending the most thin-skinned of poets and men ; and when 
he was jilted in that little court affair of which we have spoken, 
his warm-hearted patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queens- 
beny* (the "Kittys beautiful and 3'oung," of Prior,) pleaded 

" A hare who, in a civil way, 
Complied with everything, like Gay." 

Fables, " The Hare and many Friends." 

* " I can give you no account of Gay," says Pope, curiously, " since 
he was raffled for, and won back by his Duchess." — Works, Baecoe's Ed., 
vol. ix. p. 392. 

Here is the letter Pope wrote to him when the death of Queen Anne 
brought back Lord Clarendon from Hanover, and lost him the Secretary- 
ship of that nobleman, of which he had had but a short tenure. 

Gay's court prospects were never happy from this time. — His dedica- 
tion of the " Shepherd's Week " to Bolingbroke, Swift used to call the 
" original sin" which had hurt him with the house of Hanover: — 

" Sept. 23, 1714. 

" Dear Mr. Gay, — Welcome to your native soil ! welcome to your 
friends ! thrice welcome to me ! whether returned in glory, blest with 
court interest, the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agree- 
able hopes ; or melancholy with dejection, contemplative of the changes 
of fortune, and doubtful for the future ; whether returned a triumphant 
Whig or a desponding Tory, equally all hail ! equally beloved and welcome 
to me ! If happy, I am to partake in your elevation ; if unhappy, you 
have still a warm corner in my heart, and a retreat at Binfield in the worst 
of times at your service. If you are a Tory, or thought so by any man, I 
know it can proceed from nothing but your gratitude to a few people who 
endeavored to serve you, and whose politics were never your concern. If 
you are a Whig, as I rather hope, and as I think your principles and mine 
(as brother poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I know you will be 
an honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I know you are 
incapable of being so much of either party as to be good for nothing. 
Therefore, once more, whatever you are or in whatever state you are, all 
hail ! 

" One or two of your own friends complained they had heard nothing 
from you since the Queen's death; I told them no man living loved Mr. Gay 
better than I, yet I had not once written to him in all his voyage. This I 
thought a convincing proof how truly one may be a friend to another with- 
out telling him so every month. But they had reasons, too, themselves 
to allege in your excuse, as men who really value one another will never 
want such as make their friends and themselves easy. The late universal 
concern in public affairs threw us all into a hurry of spirits : even I, who 
am more a philosopher than to expect anything from any reign, was borne 
away with the current, and full of the expectation of the successor. During 
your journeys, I knew not whither to aim a letter after you ; that was a 
sort of shooting flying : add to this the demand Homer had upon me, to write 
fifty verses a day, besides learned notes, all which are at a conclusion for 
this year. Rejoice with me, O my friend ! that my labor is over ; come and 
make merry with me in much feasting. We will feed among the lilies (by 
the lilies I mean the ladies). Are not the Rosalindas of Britain as charming 
astho Blousalindas of the Hague ? or have the two groat Pastoral poets of 



208 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

his cause with indignation, and quitted the com-t in a huff, 
carrying off with them into their retirement their kind gentle 
protege. With these kind lordly folks, a real Duke and 
Duchess, as delightful as those who harbored Don Quixote, 
and loved that dear old Sancho, Gay lived, and w^as lapped in 
cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and his saucer of cream, 
and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so 
ended.* He became ver}" melancholy and laz}^ sadl}^ plethoric, 
and onl}^ occasionall}^ diverting in his latter da3-s. But ever}- 
bod}' loved him, and the remembrance of his prett}^ little tricks ; 
and the raging old Dean of St. Patrick's, chafing in his banish- 
ment, was afraid to open the letter which Pope wrote him, 
announcing the sad news of the death of Gay.-f 

our nation renounced love at the same time ? for Philips, immortal Philips, 
hath deserted, yea, and in a rustic manner kicked his Rosalind. Dr. Parnell 
and I have been inseparable ever since you went. We are now at the Batli, 
where (if you are not, as I heartily hope, better engaged) your coming 
would be the greatest pleasure to us in the world. Talk not of expenses : 
Homer shall support his children. I beg a line from you, directed to the 
Post-house in Bath. Poor Parnell is in an ill state of healtn. 

" Pardon me if I add a word of advice in the poetical way. Write 
something on the King, or Prince, or Princess. On whatsoever foot you 
may be with the court, this can do no harm. I shall never know wliere to 
end, and am confounded in the many things I have to say to you, though 
they all amount but to this, that I am, entirely, as ever, 

" Your," «S;c. 

Gay took the advice " in the poetical way," and published " An Epistle 
to a Lady, occasioned by the arrival of her Royal Highness the Princess of 
Wales." But though this brought him access to court, and the attendance 
of the Prince and Princess at his farce of the " What d'ye call it ? " it did 
not bring him a place. On the accession of George II., he was offered the 
situation of Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa (her Highness being 
then two years old) ; but " by this offer," says Johnson, "he thought him- 
self insulted." 

* " Gay was a great eater. — As the French philosopher used to prove 
his existence by Cog i lo, eryo sum, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is, 
Edit, enjo est." — Congreve, in a letter to Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

t Swift endorsed the letter — "On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death; 
received Dec. 15, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some 
misfortune." 

"It was by Swift's interest that Gay was made known to Lord Boling- 
broke, and obtained his patronage." — Scott's Swift, vol. 1. p. 156. 

Pope wrote on the occasion of Gay's death, to Swift, thus : — 

1" Dec. 5, 1732.J 
" . . . . One of the nearest and longest ties I have ever had is broken 
all on a sudden by the unexpected death of poor Mr. Gay. An inflamma- 
tory fever hurried him out of this life in three days He asked of you 

a few hours before when in acute torment by the inflammation in his bowels 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 209 

Swift's letters to him are beautiful ; and having no purpose 
but kindness in writing to him, no part}" aim to advocate, or 
slight or anger to w^reak, every word the Dean saj's to his 
favorite is natural, trustworth}", and kindl}". His admiration 
for Gay's parts and honest}^, and his laughter at his weaknesses, 
were alike just and genuine. He paints his character in won* 
derful pleasant traits of jocular satire. " I writ lately to Mr. 
Pope," Swift says, writing to G a}' : " I wish you had a little 
villakin in his neighborhood ; but 3'ou are j^et too volatile, and 
any lady with a coach and six horses would carry you to Japan." 
" If 3"0ur ramble," says Swift, in another letter, '' was on horse- 
back, I am glad of it, on account of your health ; but I know 
3^our arts of patching up a journe}^ between stage-coaches and 
friends' coaches — for you are as arrant a cockne}' as any hosier 
in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into 
yours, that you ought to have some great work in scheme, 
which ma}' take up seven 3'ears to finish, besides two or three 
under-ones that ma}' add another thousand pounds to your 
stock, and then I shall be in less pain about you. I know you 
can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, 
without considering that the interest of a whole thousand 
pounds brings you but half a crown a day." And then Swift 
goes oflT from Gay to pay some grand compliments to her 
Grace the Duchess of Queensberry, in whose sunshine Mr. 
Gay was basking, and in whose radiance the Dean would have 
liked to warm himself too. 

But we have Gay here before us, in these letters — lazy, 
kindly, uncommonly idle ; rather slovenly, I'm afraid ; for ever 
eating and saying good things ; a little round French abbe of 
a man, sleek, soft-handed, and soft-hearted. 

Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men 
than their works ; or to deal with the latter onl}' in as far as 
they seem to illustrate the character of their writers. Mr. 
Gay's "Fables," which were written to benefit that amiable 
Prince, the Duke of Cumberland, the warrior of Dettingen and 
Culloden, I have not, I own, been able to peruse since a period 
of very early youth ; and it must be confessed that they did 
not efl[ect much benefit upon the illustrious young Prince, whose 
manners they were intended to mollify, and whose natural 

and breast His sisters, we suppose, will be his heirs, who are two 

widows Good God ! how often are we to die before we go quite ofE 

this stage 1 In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part. 
God keep those we have left ! few are worth praying for, and one's self the 
least of all." 

U 



210 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

ferocity our gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. 
But the six pastorals called the " Shepherd's Week," and the 
burlesque poem of "Trivia," an}^ man fond of laz}^ literature 
will find delightful at the present da}", and must read from 
beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what 
charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture : graceful, 
minikin, fantastic ; with a certain beaut}' always accompanying 
them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with gold 
clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks 
and waistcoats and bodices, dance their loves to a minuet-tune 
played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from 
the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die of 
despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little giins and ogles ; 
or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbor of pea- 
green crockery ; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been 
washed with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot. Gay's 
gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that of Philhps — his 
rival and Pope's — a serious and dreary idyllic cockney ; not 
that Gay's "Bumkinets" and "Hobnelias" are a whit more 
natural than the would-be serious characters of the other pos- 
ture-master ; but the quality of this true humorist was to laugh 
and make laugh, though always with a secret kindness and ten- 
derness, to perform the drollest little antics and capers, but 
always with a certain grace, and to sweet music — as you may 
have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a 
monkey, turning over head and heels, or clattering and pirouettin 
in a pair of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of love and ap 
peal in his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins affection 
and protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift of nature ! 
It was this which made the great folks and court ladies free 
and friendly with John Gay — which made Pope and Arbuthnot 
love him — which melted the savage heart of Swift when he 
thought of him — and drove away, for a moment or two, the 
dark frenzies which obscured the lonely tyrant's brain, as he 
heard Gay's voice with its simple melody and artless ringing 
laughter. 

What used to be said about Rubini, gu'il avail des larmes 
dans la voix, may be said of Gay,* and of one other humorist 
of whom we shall have to speak. In almost every ballad of 

* " Gay, like Goldsmith, had a musical talent. ' He could play on the 
flute/ says Malone, * and was, therefore, enabled to adapt so happily some 
of the airs in the " Beggar's Opera." ' " — Notes to Spence. 






PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 211 

his, however slight,* in the "Beggar's Operant and in its 
wearisome continuation (where the verses are to the full as 

* " 'Twas when the seas were roaring 

With hollow blasts of wind, 
A damsel lay deploring 

All on a rock reclined. 
Wide o'er the foaming billows 

She cast a wistful look ; 
Her head was crown'd with willows 

That trembled o'er the brook. 



U t 



Twelve months are gone and over, 

And nine long tedious days ; 
Why didst thou, venturous lover — 

Why didst thou trust the seas 1 
Cease, cease, thou cruel Ocean, 

And let my lover rest ; 
Ah ! what's thy troubled motion 

To that within my breast ? 

" * The merchant, robb'd of pleasure. 

Sees tempests in despair ; 
But what's the loss of treasure 

To losing of my dear 1 
Should you some coast be laid on. 

Where gold and diamonds grow, 
You'd find a richer maiden, 

But none that loves you so. 



€t < 



How can they say that Nature 

Has nothing made in vain ; 
Why, then, beneath the water 

Should hideous rocks remain 1 
No eyes the rocks discover 

That lurk beneath the deep, 
To wreck the wandering lover, 

And leave the maid to weep ?' 

"All melancholy lying, 

Thus wailed she for her dear;' 
Repay'd each blast with sighing. 

Each billow with a tear ; 
When o'er the white wave stooping. 

His floating corpse she spy'd; 
Then like a lily drooping, 
She bow'd her head, and died." 

A Ballad from the " What d'ye call it f " 

^nJJi^^' ^'"^M ^^^,^^^" Observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty 
sort of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at 
such a thmg for some tmie, but afterwards thought it would be better to 



212 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

prett}" as in the first piece, however), there is a peculiar, 
hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody. It charms and jnelts 
you. It's indefinable, but it exists ; and is the property of 
John Ga3^'s and Oliver Goldsmith's best verse, as fragrance is 
of a violet, or freshness of a rose. 

Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so, 
famous that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, butJ. 

so delightful that it is always pleasant to hear : — | 

» 

" I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my 
Lord Harcourt's which he lent me. It overlooks a common field, where, 
under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers — as constant as ever were 
found in romance — beneath a spreading beech. The name of the one (let 
it sound as it will) was John He wet ; of the other Sarah Drew. John was 
a well-set man, about five and twenty ; Sarah a brown woman of eighteen. 
John had for several months borne the labor of the day in the same field 
with Sarah ; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to 
bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of 
the whole neighborhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of 
each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained 
her parents' consent, and it was but till the next week that tliey were to wait 
to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they 
were talking of their wedding-clothes ; and John was now matching several 
kinds of poppies and field-flowers to her complexion, to make her a present 
of knots for the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last 
of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the 
laborers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened 
and out of breath, sunk on a haycock; and John (who never separated 
from her), sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to 
secure her. Immediately there was heard so loud a crack, as i^ heaven 
had burst assunder. The laborers, all solicitous for each other's safety, 
called to one another : those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no 
answer, stepped to the place where they lay : they first saw a little smoke, 
and after, this faithful pair — John, with one arm about his Sarah's neck, 
and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. 



write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the 'Beg- 
gar's Opera.' He began on it, and when he first mentioned it to Swift, the 
Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed 
what he wrote to both of us ; and we now and then gave a correction, or a 
word or two of advice ; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was 
done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, 
who, after reading it over, said, ' It would either take greatly, or be damned 
confoundedly,' We were all at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of 
the event, till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of 
Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, ' It will do — it must do ! — I 
see it in the eyes of them ! ' This was a good while before the first act M'as 
over, and so gave us ease soon ; for the Duke [besides his own good taste] 
has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the 
taste of the public. He was quite right in this as usual ; the good nature 
of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a 
clamor of a^jplause." — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 213 

They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender 
posture. There was no mark or discoloring on their bodies — only that 
Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. 
They were buried the next day in one grave." 

And the proof that this description is delightful and beauti- 
ful is, that the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he 
thought proper to steal it an^ to send it off to a certain lady 
and wit, with whom he pretended to be in love in those da3's 
— my Lord Duke of Kingston's daughter, and married to 
Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty's Ambassador at Con- 
stantinople. 

We are now come to the greatest name on our list — the 
highest among the poets, the highest among the Enghsh wits 
and humorists with whom we have to rank him. If the author 
of the " Dunciad" be not a humorist, if the poet of the " Rape 
of the Lock " be not a wit, who deserves to be called so ? Be- 
sides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which 
we should respect him, men of letters should admire him as 
being the greatest literary artist that England has seen. He 
polished, he refined, he thought; he took thoughts from other 
works to adorn and complete his own ; borrowing an idea or a 
cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a simile from 
a flower, or a river, stream, or any object which struck him in 
his walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at 
an early age ; * and taught himself to write b}^ cop3ing printed 

* " Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were Mr. Pope's great favorites, in 
the order they are named, in his first reading, till he was about twelve years 
old." — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

"Mr. Pope's father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in Hol- 
lands, wholesale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make English 
verses when very young. He was pretty difficult in being pleased; and 
used often to send him back to new turn them. 'These are not good 
rhimes;' for that was my husband's word for verses." — Pope's Mother. 
Spence. 

" I wrote things, I'm ashamed to say how soon. Part of an Epic Poem 
when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes and some of the neigh- 
boring islands ; and the poem opened under water with a description of the 
Court of Neptune." — Pope. Ibid. 

" His perpetual application (after he set to. study of himself) reduced 
him in four years' time to so bad a state of health, that, after trying physi- 
cians for a good while in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper ; 
and sat down calmly in a full expectation of death in a short time. Under 
this thought, he wrote letters to take a last farewell of some of his more par- 
ticular friends, and, among the rest, one to the Abbe Southcote. The Abbe 
was extremely concerned, both for his very ill state of health and the resolu- 
tion he said he had taken. He thought there might yet be hope, and went 
immediately to Dr. Radcliffe, with whom he was well acquainted, told him 
Mr. Pope's case, got full directions from him, and carried them down to 



214 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

books. Then he passed into the hands of the priests, and 
from his first clerical master, who came to him when he was 
eight j-ears old, he went to a school at Twyford, and another 
school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all that he 
had got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went 
with his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a 
few months under a fourth priest. ' ' And this was all the 
teaching I ever had," he said, " and God knows it extended a 
ver}" little way." 

When he had done with his priests he took to reading by 
himself, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthu- 
siasm, especially for poetry. He learned versification from 
Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of " Alcander," he 
imitated ever^^ poet, Cowlej^ Milton, Spenser, Statins, Homer, 
Virgil. In a few 3'ears he had dipped into a great number of 
the Enghsh, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. "This 
I did," he says, " without any design, except to amuse mj^self ; 
and got the languages b}' hunting after the stories in the 
several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the lan- 
guages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me, and was 
like a bo}^ gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as 
they fell in his wa3^ These five or six years I looked upon as 
the happiest in my life." Is not here a beautiful holida}' 
picture ? The forest and the fairy stor3'-book — the bo}' spell- 
ing Ariosto or Virgil under the trees, battling with the Cid for 
the love of Chimene, or dreaming of Armida's garden — peace 
and sunshine round about — the kindest love and tenderness 
waiting for him at his quiet home j-onder — and Genius throb- 
bing in his 3'oung heart, and whispering to him, " You shall be 
great ; 3'ou shall be famous ; you too shall love and sing ; 3'ou 
will sing her so nobly that some kind heart shall forget 3^ou are 
weak and ill-formed. Ever3^ poet had a love. Fate must give 
one to you too," — and day b3' da3^ he walks the forest, ver3^ 
likely looking out for that charmer. "They were the hap- 
piest days of his life," he says, when he was .only dreaming 
of his fame : when he had gained that mistress she was no 
consoler. 

That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about 
the 3^ear 1705, when Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are 

extant, addressed to a certain Lady M , whom the youth 

courted, and to whom he expressed his ardor in language, to 

Pope in Windsor Forest. The chief thing the Doctor ordered him was to 
apply less, and to ride every day. The following his advice soon restored 
him to his health." — Pope. Spence. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 215 

say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious, and affected. 
He imitated love-compositions as he had been imitating love- 
poems just before — it was a sham mistress he courted, and a 
sham passion, expressed as became it. These unluck}- letters 
found their vva}' into print years afterwards, and were sold to 
the congenial Mr. Curll. If an}' of my hearers, as 1 hope they 
may, should take a fanc}' to look at Pope's correspondence, let 
them pass over that first part of it ; over, perhaps, almost all 
Pope's letters to women ; in which there is a tone of not pleas- 
ant gallantry, and, amidst a profusion of compliments and 
politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the little 
pert, prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about his 
loves, and that little not edifying. He wrote flames and rap- 
tures and elaborate verse and prose for Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu ; but that passion probably came to a climax in an 
impertinence and was extinguished b}^ a box on the ear, or 
some such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a 
fervor mu(5h more genuine than that of his love had been. It 
was a feeble, pun}' grimace of love, and paltering with passion. 
After Mr. Pope had sent off one of his fine compositions to 
Lady Mar}', he made a second draft from the rough copy, and 
favored some other friend with it. He was so charmed with 
the letter of Gay's that I have just quoted, that he had copied 
that and amended it, and sent it to Lad}' Mary as his own. A 
gentleman who writes letters a deux fins^ and after having 
poured out his heart to the beloved, serves up the same dish 
rechauffe ^ a friend, is not very much in earnest about his 
loves, however much he may be in his piques and vanities when 
his impertinence gets its due. 

But, save that unlucky part of the " Pope Correspondence," 
I do not know, in the range of our literature, volumes more 
delightful.* You live in them in the finest company in the 

* " Mr. Pope to the Kev. Mr. Broom, Pulham, Norfolk. 

"Aug. 29th, 1730. 
"Dear Sir, — I intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, 
the death of Mr. Fenton, before yours came, but stayed to have in- 
formed myself and you of the circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he 
felt a gradual decay, though so early in life, and was declining for five or 
six months. It was not, as I apprehended, the gout in his stomach, but, I 
believe, rather a complication first of gross humors, as he was naturally 
corpulent, not discharging themselves, as he used no sort of exercise. No 
man better bore the approaches of his dissolution (as I am told), or with 
less ostentation yielded up his being. The great modesty which you know 
was natural to him, and the great contempt he had for all sorts of vanity 
and parade, never appeared more than in his last moments : he had a con- 



216 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

world. A little stately, perhaps ; a little apprete and conscious 
that they are speaking to whole generations who are listening ; 

scious satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself honest, true, 
and unpretending to more than his own. So he died as he lived, with that 
secret, yet sufficient contentment. 

" As to any papers left behind him, I dare say they can be but few ; 
for this reason, he never wrote out of vanity, or tliought much of the ap- 
plause of men. I know an instance when he did his utmost to conceal his 
own merit that way ; and if we join to this his natural love of ease, I fancy 
we must expect little of this sort: at least, I have heard of none, except 
some few further remarks on Waller (which his cautious integrity made 
hira leave an order to be given to ]Vlr. Tonson), and perhaps, though it is 
many years since I saw it, a translation of the first book of ' Oppian.' He 
liad begun a tragedy of ' Dion,' but made small progress in it. 

" As to his other affairs, he died poor but honest, leaving no debts or 
legacies, except of a few pounds to Mr. Trumbull and my lady, in token 
of respect, gratefulness, and mutual esteem. 

" 1 shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, 
deserving, unpretending, Christian, and philosophical character in his 
epitaph. There truth may be spoken in a few words ; as for flourish, and 
oratory, and poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively writers, such 
as love writing for writing's sake, and would rather show their own fine 
parts than report the valuable ones of any other man. So the elegy I 
renounce. 

" I condole with you from my heart on the loss of so worthy a man, 
and a friend to us both. .... 

" Adieu ; let us love his memory and profit by his example. Am very 
sincerely, dear sir, 

" Your affectionate and real servant." 

"To THE Eakl of Burlington. ^ 

" August, 1714. 
" My Lord — If your mare could speak she would give you an account 
of what extraordinary company she had on the road, which, since she 

cannot do, I will. -, ,. , i • ^ t t^it t- 

" It was the enterprising Mr. Lintot, the redoubtable rival of Mr Ton- 
son, who, mounted on a stone-horse, overtook me in Wmdsor Forest. He 
said he heard I designed for Oxford, the seat of the Muses, and would, as 
my bookseller, by all means accompany me thither. . .. 4. .- 

" I asked him where he got his horse ? He answered he got it of his 
publisher ; ' for that rogue, my printer,' said he, ' disappointed me. I hoped 
to put him in good humor by a treat at the tavern of a brown fricassee of 
rabbits, which cost ten shillings, with two quarts of wine besides my con- 
versation. I thought mvself cock-sure of his horse, which he readily prom- 
ised me, but said that Mr. Tonson had just such another design ot gomg to 
Cambridge, expecting there the copy of a new kind of Horace from Dr. — — ; 
and if Mr. Tonson went, he was pre-engaged to attend him, being to have the 
printing of the said copy. So, in short, I borrowed this stone-horse ot my 
publisher, which he had of Mr. Oldmixon for a debt. He lent me, too, the 
pretty boy you see after me. He was a smutty dog yesterday and cost 
me more than two hours to wash the ink off his face ; but the devil is a 
fair-conditioned de\il, and very forward in his catechism. If you have 
any more bags lie shall carry them.' 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 217 

but in the tone of their voices — pitched, as no doubt the}^ are, 
be3'ond the mere conversation key — in the expression of their 



(( 



I thought Mr. Lintot's civility not to be neglected, so gave the boy a 
small bag containing three shirts and an Elzevir Virgil, and, mounting 
in an instant, proceeded on the road, with ray man before, my courteous 
stationer beside, and the aforesaid devil behind. 

" Mr. Lintot began in this manner : ' Now, damn them ! What if they 
should put it into the newspaper how you and I went together to Oxford ? 
What would I care 1 If I should go down into Sussex they would say I 
was gone to the Speaker ; but what of that 1 If my son were but big 
enough to go on with the business, by G — d, I would keep as good company 
as old Jacob.' 

" Hereupon, I inquired of his son. ' The lad ' says he, ' has fine parts, 
but is somewhat sickly, much as you are. I spare for nothing in his edu- 
cation at Westminster. Pray, don't you think Westminster to be the best 
school in England 1 Most of the late Ministry came out of it ; so did many 
of this Ministry. I hope the boy will make his fortune.' 

" ' Don't you design to let him pass a year at Oxford 1 ' ' To what 
purpose ? ' said he. ' The Universities do but make pedants, and I intend 
to breed him a man of business.' 

" As Mr. Lintot was talking I observed he sat uneasy on his saddle, for 
which I expressed some solicitude. ' Nothing,' says he. ' I can bear it 
well enough ; but, since we have the day before us, methinks it would be 
very pleasant for you to rest awhile under the woods.' When we were 
alighted, ' See, here, what a mighty pretty Horace I have in my pocket ? 
What, if you amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount again 1 
Lord ! if you pleased, what a clever miscellany might you make at leisure 
hours'? ' ' Perhaps I may,' said I, ' if we ride on : the motion is an aid to 
my fancy ; a round trot very much awakens my spirits ; then jog on apace, 
and I'll think as hard as I can.' 

" Silence ensued for a full hour ; after which Mr, Lintot lugged the 
reins, stopped short, and broke out, ' Well, sir, how far have you gone 1 ' 
I answered, seven miles. ' Z — ds, sir,' said Lintot, ' I thought you had done 
seven stanzas. Oldsworth, in a ramble round Wimbledon Hill, would trans- 
late a whole ode in half this time. I'll say that for Oldsworth [though I 
lost by his Timothy's], he translates an ode of Horace the quickest of any 
man in England. I remember Dr. King would write verses in a tavern, 
three hours after he could not speak : and there is Sir Richard, in that 
rumbling old chariot of his, between Fleet Ditch and St. Giles's Pound, 
shall make you half a Job.' 

" ' Pray, Mr. Lintot,' said I, ' now you talk of translators, what is your 
method of managing them 'i ' ' Sir,' repMed he, ' these are the saddest pack 
of rogues in the world : in a hungry fit, they'll swear they understand all 
the languages in the universe. I have known one of them take down a 
Greek book upon my counter and cry, "Ah, this is Hebrew, and must read 
it from the latter end." By G — d, I can never be sure in these fellows, for 
I neither understand Greek, Latin, French, nor Italian myself. But this is 
my way : I agree with them for ten shillings per sheet, with a proviso that 
I will have their doings corrected with whom I please ; so, by one or the 
other they are led at last to the true sense of an author ; my judgment 
giving the negative to all my translators.' ' Then how are you sure these 
correctors may not impose upon you 1 ' ' Why, I get any civil gentleman 
(especially any Scotchman) that comes into my shop, to read the original 



218 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

thoughts, their various views and natures, there is something 
generous, and cheering, and ennobling. You are in the society 

to me in English ; by tliis I know whether my first translator be deficient, 
and whether my corrector merits his money or not. 

" ' I'll tell you what happened to me last month. I bargained with 
S for a new version of " Lucretius," to publish against Tonson's, agree- 
ing to pay the author so many shillings at his producing so many lines. 
He made a great progress in a very short time, and I gave it to the cor- 
rector to compare with the Latin ; but he went directly to Creech's trans- 
lation, and found it the same, word for word, all but the first page. Now, 
what d'ye think I did '? I arrested the translator for a cheat ; nay, and I 
stopped the corrector's pay, too, upon the proof that he had made use of 
Creech instead of the original.' 

" ' Pray tell me next how you deal with the critics ? ' ' Sir,' said he, 
'nothing more easy. I can silence the most formidable of them : the rich 
ones for a sheet apiece of the blotted manuscript, which cost me nothing; 
they'll go about with it to their acquaintance, and pretend they had it from 
the author, who submitted it to their correction : this has given some of 
them such an air, that in time they come to be consulted with and dedi- 
cated to as the tip-top critics of the town. — As for the poor critics, I'll 
give you one instance of my management, by which you may guess the 
rest : A lean man, that looked like a very good scholar, came to me t'other 
day ; he turned over your Homer, shook his head, shrugged up his shoul- 
ders, and pish'd at every line of it. " One would wonder," says he, " at 
the strange presumption of some men; Homer is no such easy task as 
every stripling, every versifier " — he was going on when my wife called to 
dinner. "Sir," said I, "will you please to eat a piece of beef with me? " 
" Mr. Lintot," said he, " I am very sorry you should be at the expense of 
this great book : I am really concerned on j'our account." " Sir, I am 
much obliged to you : if you can dine upon a piece of beef, together with 
a slice of pudding — ? " " Mr. Lintot, I do not say but Mr. Pope, if he 
would condescend to advise with men of learning — " " Sir, the pudding 
is upon the table, if you please to go in." My critic complies ; he comes 
to a taste of your poetry, and tells me in the same breath that the book 
is commendable, and the pudding excellent. 

" ' Now, sir,' continued Mr. Lintot, ' in return for the frankness I have 
shown, pray tell me, is it the opinion of your friends at court that my Lord 
Lansdowne will be brought to the bar or not 1 ' I told him I heard he 
would not, and I hoped it, my lord being one I had particular obligations^ 
to. That may be,' replied Mr. Lintot; 'but by G — if he is not, I shall* 
lose the printing of a very good trial.' 

" These, my lord, are a few traits with which you discern the genius 
of Mr. Lintot, which I have chosen for the subject of a letter. I dropped 
him as soon as I got to Oxford, and paid a visit to my Lord Carleton, at 

Middleton "I am," &c. 

« 

"Dr. Svtift to Mr. Pope. 

" Sept. 29, 1725. 

" I am now returning to the noble scene of Dublin — into the grand 
monde — for fear of burying my parts; to signalize myself among curates 
and vicars, and correct all corruptions crept in relating to the weight of 
bread-and-butter through those dominions where I govern. I have em- 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 219 

of men who have filled the greatest parts in the world's story — 
you are with St. John the statesman ; Peterborough the con- 
ployed my time (besides ditching) in finishing, correcting, amending, and 
transcribing my 'Travels' [Gulliver's], in four parts complete, newly aug- 
mented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or 
rather, when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture his ears. 
I like the scheme of our meeting after distresses and dispersions ; but the 
chief end I propose to myself in all my labors is to vex the world rather 
than divert it ; and if I could compass that design without hurting my own 
person or fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever 
seen, without reading. I am exceedingly pleased that you have done with 
translations ; Lord Treasurer Oxford often lamented that a rascally world 
should lay you under a necessity of misemploying your genius for so long 
a time ; Ijut since you will now be so much better employed, when you 
think of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. I have ever 
hated all nations, professions, and communities ; and all my love is towards 
individuals — for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Coun- 
cillor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one: it is so with physicians (I'will 
not speak of my own trade), soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the 
rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man — although 
I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. 

" .... I have got materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of 
that definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis capax. 
.... The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute — nay, I will 
hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point 

" Mr. Lewis sent me an account of Dr. Arbuthnot's illness, which is a 
very sensible affliction to me, who, by living so long out of the world, have 
lost that hardness of heart contracted by years and general conversation. I 
am daily losing friends, and neither seeking nor getting others. Oh! if the 
Tvorld had but a dozen of Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my ' Travels ! ' " 

''Mr. Pope to Dr. Swift. 

" October 15, 1725. 

" I am wonderfully pleased with the suddenness of your kind answer. 
It makes me hope you are coming towards us, and that you incline more 

and more to your old friends Here is one [Lord Bolingbroke], who 

was once a powerful planet, but has now (after long experience of all that 
comes of shining) learned to be content with returning to his first point 
without the thought or ambition of shining at all. Here is another [Edward, 
Earl of Oxford], who thinks one of the greatest glories of his father was to 
have distinguished and loved you, and who loves you hereditarily. Here 
is Arbuthnot, recovered from*^ the jaws of death, and more pleased with 
the hope of seeing you again than of reviewing a world, every part of 
which he has long despised but what is made up of a few men like your- 
self 

" Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs — and gen- 
erally by Tories too. Because he had humor, he was supposed to have dealt 
with Dr. Swift, in like manner as when any one had learning formerly, he 
was thought to have dealt with the devil. . *. . . 

" Lord Bolingbroke had not the least harm by his fall ; I wish he had 
received no more by his other fall. But Lord Bolingbroke is the most im- 
proved mind since you saw him that ever was improved without shifting 



220 ENGLISH IIU^NIORISTS. 

qneror ; Swift, the greatest wit of all times ; Ga}^ the kindliest 
laugher — it is a privilege to sit in that compan3\ Delightful 
and generous banquet ! with a little faith and a little fane}- any 
one of us here may enjo}' it, and conjure up those great figures 
out of the past, and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that 
there is always a certain cachet about great men — they may be 
as mean on many points as you or I, but they carry their great 
air — they speak of common life more largely and generousl}^ 
than common men do — they regard the world with a manlier 
countenance, and see its real features more fairly than the timid 
shufflers who only dare to look up at life through blinkers, or 
to have an opinion when there is a crowd to back it. He who 
reads these noble records of a past age, salutes and reverences 
the great spirits who adorn it. You may go home now and 
talk with St. John ; you may take a volume from your library 
and listen to Swift and Pope. 

Might I give counsel to an}' 3'oung hearer, I would say to 
him, Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books 
and life that is the most wholesome society ; learn to admire 
rightl}' ; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great 
men admired ; they aclmired great things : narrow spirits admire 
basely, and worship meanl}'. I know nothing in any story more 
gallant and cheering than the love and friendship which this 
company of famous men bore towards one another. There 
never has been a society of men more friendl3% as there never 
was one more illustrious. Who dares quarrel with Mr. Pope, 
great and famous himself, for liking the society of men great 
and ftxmous? and for liking them for the qualities which made 
them so? A mere prett}' fellow from "White's " could not have 
written the " Patriot King," and would very likely have despised 
little Mr. Pope, the decrepit Papist, whom the great St. John 
held to be one of the best and greatest of men : a mere noble- 
man of the court could no more have won Barcelona, than he 

into a new body, or being paullo minus ah angelis. I have often imagined to 
myself, that if ever all of us meet again, after so many varieties and 
changes, after so much of the old world and of the old man in each of us 
has been altered, that scarce a single thought of the one, any more than a 
single atom of the other, remains just the same; I have fancied, I say, 
that we should meet like the righteous in the millennium, quite in peace, 
divested of all our former passions, smiling at our past follies, and content 
to enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity. 

• ••«•••••• 

" I designed to have left the following page for Dr. Arbuthnot to fill, 
but he is so touched with the period in yours to me, concerning him, that he 
intends to answer it by a whole letter. ... " 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 221 

could have written Peterborough's letters to Pope,* which are 
as witty as Congreve : a mere Irish Dean could not have written 
" Gulliver ; " and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all 
these men. To name his friends is to name the best men of 
his time. Addison had a senate ; Pope reverenced his equals. 
He spoke of Swift with respect and admiration alwa3'S. Plis 
admiration for Bolingbroke was so great, that when some one 
said of his friend, "There is something in that great man 
which looks as if he was placed here by mistake," "Yes," Pope 
answered, "and when the comet appeared to us a month or two 
ago, I had sometimes an imagination that it might possiblj- be 
come to carry him home, as a coach comes to one's door for 
visitors." So these great spirits spoke of one another. Show 
me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that ever dawdled 
round a club table, so faithful and so friendly. 

We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with 
the exception of Congreve, were what we should now call men's 
men. They spent many hours of the four-and-twenty, a fourth 

* Of the Earl of Peterborough, Walpole says : — " He was one of those 
men of careless wit and negligent grace, who scatter a thousand hon-mots 
and idle verses, which we painful compilers gather and hoard, till the 
authors stare to find themselves authors. Sucli was this lord, of an ad- 
vantageous figure and enterprising spirit; as gallant as Amadis and as 
brave ; but a little more expeditious in his journeys : for he is said to have 

seen more kings and more postilions than any man in Europe He 

was a man, as his friends said, who would neither live nor die like any 
other mortal." 

"From the Earl of Peterborough to Pope. 

"You must receive my letters with a "just impartiality, and give grains 
of allowance for a gloomy or rainy day ; I sink grievously with the 
weather-glass, and am quite spiritless when oppressed with the thoughts of 
a birthday or a return. 

" Dutiful affection was bringing me to town ; but undutiful laziness, 
and being much out of order, keep me in the country : however, if alive, I 
must make my appearance at the birthday 

" You seem to think it vexatious that I shall allow you but one woman 
at a time either to praise or love. If I dispute with you upon this point, I 
doubt every jury will give a verdict against me. So, sir, with a Mahom- 
etan indulgence, I allow you pluralities, the favorite privilege of our 
church. 

" I find you don't mend upon correction ; again I tell you you must not 
think of women in a reasonable way ; you know we always make goddesses 
of those we adore upon earth ; and do not all the good men tell us we must 
lay aside reason in what relates to the Deity '? 

". . . . I should have been glad of anything of Swift's. Pray, when 
you write to him next, tell him I expect him with impatience, in a place as 
odd and as much out of the way as himself. Yours." 

Peterborough married Mrs. Anastasia Robinson, the celebrated singer. 



222 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

part of each dsLj nearly, in clubs and coffee-houses, where they 
dined, drank, and smoked. Wit and news went by word of 
mouth; a journal of 1710 contained the very smallest portion 
of one or the other. The chiefs spoke, the faithful habitues sat 
round ; strangers came to wonder and listen. Old Dryden had 
his headquarters at " Will's," in Russell Street, at the coi'ner 
of Bow Street : at which place Pope saw him when he was 
twelve 3'ears old. The company used to assemble on the first 
floor — what was called the dining-room floor in those daj's — 
and sat at various tables smoking their pipes. It is recorded 
that the beaux of the day thought it a great honor to be allowed 
to take a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box. When Addison began 
to reign, he with a certain craftj^ propriet}" — a policy let us 
call it — which belonged to his nature, set np his court, and 
appointed the officers of his roj'al house. His palace was 
" Button's," opposite " Will's."* A quiet opposition, a silent 
assertion of empire, distinguished this great man. Addison's 
ministers were Budgell, Tickell, Phillips, Care}' ; his master 
of the horse, honest Dick Steele, who was what Dnroc was to 
Napoleon, or Hard}' to Nelson ; the man who peiformed his 
master's bidding, and would have cheerfull}' died in his quarrel. 
Addison lived with these people for seven or eight hours every 
day. The male society passed over their punch-bowls and 
tobacco-pipes^ about as much time as ladies of that age spent 
over Spadiile and Manille. 

For a brief space, upon coming up to town. Pope formed 
part of King Joseph's court, and was his rather too eager and 
obsequious humble servant.! Dick Steele, the editor of the 

* " Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, 
who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side 
of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that 
the wits of that time used to assemble. It is said that when Addison had 
suffered any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company from 
Button's house. 

" From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat 
late and drank too much wine." — Dr. Johnson. 

Will's coffee-house was on the west side of Bow Street, and " corner of 
Russell Street." See " Handbook of London." 

t " My acquaintance with Mr. Addison commenced in 1712 : I liked 
him then as well as I liked any man, and was very fond of his conversa- 
tion. It was very soon after that Mr. Addison advised me 'not to be con- 
tent with the applause of half the nation.' He ^^ed to talk much and often 
to me, of moderation in parties : and used to blame his dear friend Steele 
for being too much of a party man. He encouraged me in my design of 
translating the 'Iliad,' which was begun that year, and finished in 1718." — 
Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 

" Addison had Budgell, and I think Phillips, in the house with him. — 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 223 

Tatler^ Mr. Addison's man, and his own man too — a person of 
no little figure in the world of letters, patronized the young 
poet, and set him a task or two. Young Mr. Pope did the 
tasks ver}'^ quickl}^ and smartl}^ (he had been at the feet, quite 
as a bo}', of Wycherley's * decrepit reputation, and propped up 
for a year that doting old wit) : he was anxious to be well with 
the men of letters, to get a footing and a recognition. He 
thought it an honor to be admitted into their company' ; to have 
the confidence of Mr. Addison's friend. Captain Steele. His 
eminent parts obtained for him the honor of heralding Addison's 

Gay they would call one of my Aleves. — They were angry Vvith me for keep- 
ing so much with Dr. Swift and some of the late Ministry." — Popk. 
Spence's Anecdotes. 

* "To Mr. Blount. 

" Jan. 21, 1715-16. 

" I know of nothing that will be so interesting to you at present as 
some circumstances of the last act of that eminent comic poet and our 
friend, Wycherley. He has often told me, and I doubt not he did all his 
acquaintance, tliat he would marry as soon as his life was despaired of. 
Accordingly a few days before his death, he underwent the ceremony, and 
joined together those two sacraments which wise men say we should be the 
last to receive ; for, if you observe, matrimony is placed after extreme unc- 
tion in our catechism, as a kind of hint of the order of time in which they are 
to be taken. The old man then lay down, satisfied in the consciousness of 
having, by this one act, obliged a woman who (he was told) had merit, and 
shown an heroic resentment of the ill-usage of his next heir. Some hun- 
dred pounds which he had with the lady discharged his debts ; a jointure 
of 500/. a year made her a recompense ; and the nephew was left to com- 
fort himself as well as he could with the miserable remains of a mortgaged 
estate. I saw our friend twice after this was done — less peevish in his 
sickness than he used to be in his health ; neither much afraid of dying, 
nor (which in him had been more likely) much ashamed of marrying. The 
evening before he expired, he called his young wife to the bedside, and 
earnestly entreated her not to deny him one request — the last he should 
make. Upon her assurances of consenting to it, he told her: ' My dear, it 
is only this — that you will never marry an old man again.' I cannot help 
remarking that sickness, which often destroys both wit and wisdom, yet 
seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humor. Mr. Wych- 
erley showed his even in his last compliment ; though I think his request a 
little hard, for why should he bar her from doubling her jointure on the 
same easy terms 1 

" So trivial as these circumstances are, I should not be displeased myself 
to know such trifles when they concern or characterize any eminent person. 
The wisest and wittiest of men are seldom wiser or wittier than others in 
these sober moments ; at least, our friend ended much in the same charac- 
ter he had lived in ; and Horace's rule for play may as well be applied to 
him as a playwright : — 

" * Servetur ad imum 
Qualis ab incepto processerit et sibi constet.' 

" I am," &c. 



224 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

triumph of " Cato " with his admirable prologue, and heading 
the victorious procession as it were. Not content with this act 
of homage and admiration, he wanted to distinguish himself by 
assaulting Addison's enemies, and attacked John Dennis with 
a prose lampoon, which highl}^ offended his loftj^ patron. Mi*. 
Steele was instructed to write to Mr. Dennis, and inform him 
that Mr. Pope's pamphlet against him was written quite without 
Mr. Addison's approval.* Indeed, " The Narrative of Dr. 
Robert Norris on the Phrenz}^ of J. D." is a vulgar and mean 
satire, and such a blow as the magnificent Addison could never 
desire to see an}' partisan of his strike in an}^ literarj^ quarrel. 
Pope was closely allied with Swift when he wrote this pamphlet. 
It is so dirty that it has been printed in Swift's works, too. It 
bears the foul marks of the master hand. Swift admired and 
enjo3'ed with all his heart the prodigious genius of the 3'oung 
Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, who had never seen a uni- 
versit}' in his life, and came and conquered the Dons and the 
doctors with his wit. He applauded, and loved him, too, and 
protected him, and taught him mischief. I wish Addison could 
have loved him better. The best satire that ever has been penned 
would never have been written then ; and one of the best char- 
acters the world ever knew would have been without a flaw. 
But he who had so few equals could not bear one, and Pope was 
more than that. When Pope, tr3ing for himself, and soaring 
on his immortal young wings, found that his, too, was a genius, 
which no pinion of that age could follow, he rose and left Ad- 
dison's compan}^, settling on his own eminence, and singing his 
own song. 

It was not possible that Pope should remain a retainer of 
Mr. Addison ; nor likely that after escaping from his vassalage 
and assuming an independent crown, the sovereign whose 
allegiance he quitted should view him amicably. t They did 
not do wrong to mislike each other. The}^ but followed the 

* " Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably saw the self- 
ishness of Pope's friendship ; and resolving that he should have the conse- 
quences of his ofRciousness to himself, informed Dennis by Steele that he 
was sorry for the insult." — Johnson : Life of Addison. 

t " While I was heated with what I heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addi- 
son, to let him know ' that I was not unacquainted with tliis behavior of 
his ; that if I was to speak of him severely in return for it, it should not be 
in such a dirty way ; that I should rather tell him himself fairly of his 
faults, and allow his good qualities ; and that it should be something in the 
following manner.' I then subjoined the first sketch of what has smce 
been called my satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; 
and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his 
deatl), wliich was about tlu'ee years after." — Popk. Spence's Anecdotes. 



rRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 225 

impulse of nature, and the consequence of position. When 
Bernadotte became heir to a throne, the Prince Royal of Sweden 
was natural]}' Napoleon's eneni}'. " There are many passions 
and tempers of mankind," says Mr. Addison in the Spectator^ 
speaking a couple of years before their little differences between 
him and Mr. Pope took place, " which naturally' dispose us to 
depress and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of man- 
kind. All those who made their entrance into the world with 
the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, 
are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own 
deserts. Those who were once his equals envy and defame 
him, because the}^ now see him the superior ; and those who 
were once his superiors, because the}' look upon him as their 
equal." Did Mr. Addison, justl}' perhaps thinking that, as 
3'oung Mr. Pope had not had the benefit of a university educa- 
tion he couldn't know Greek, therefore he couldn't translate 
Homer, encourage his young friend Mr. Tickell, of Queen's, to 
translate that poet, and aid him with his own known scholarship 
and skill? * It was natural that Mr. Addison should doubt of 
the learning of an amateur Grecian, should have a high opinion 
of Mr. Tickell, of Queen's, and should help that ingenious 3'oung 
man. It was natural, on the other hand, that Mr. Pope and 
Mr. Pope's friends should believe that this counter-translation, 
suddenl}^ advertised and so long written, though Tickell's college 
friends had never heard of it — though, when Pope first wrote 
to Addison regarding his scheme, Mr. Addison knew nothing 
of the similar project of Tickell, of Queen's — it was natural 
that Mr. Pope and his friends, having interests, passions, and 
prejudices of their own, should believe that Tickell's translation 
was but an act of opposition against Pope, and that the}' should 
call Mr. Tickell's emulation Mr. Addison's envy — if envy it 
were. 

"And were there one whose fires 
True genius kmdles and fair fame inspires, 
Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone. 
Bear like the Turk no brotlier near the throne ; 
View liim with scornful yet witli jealous eyes. 
And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise ; 



* " That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly 
improbable ; that Addison should have been guilty of a villany seems to 
us highly improbable; but that these two men sliould have conspired to- 
getlier to commit a villany, seems, to us, improbable in a tenfold degree." 
— Macaulay. 

15 



226 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
Just hint a fault, and liesitate dislike ; 
Alike reserved to blame as to commend, 
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged : 
Like Cato give his little senate laws, 
And sit attentive to his own applause ; 
While wits and templars every sentence raise, 
And wonder with a foolish face of j)raise ; 
Wlio but must laugh if such a man there be. 
Who would not weej) if Atticus were he? " 

*'I sent the verses to Mr. Addison," said Pope, "and he 
used me very civill}^ ever after." No wonder he did. It was 
shame very likely more than fear that silenced him. Johnson 
recounts an interview between Pope and Addison after their 
quarrel, in which Pope was angr}', and Addison tried to be 
contemptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope's must have 
pierced an}' scorn. It flashes for ever, and quivers in Addison's 
memor}^ His great figure looks out on us from the past — 
stainless but for that — pale, calm, and beautiful: it bleeds 
from that black wound. He should be drawn, like St. Sebas- 
tian, with that arrow in his side. As he sent to Ga}' and asked 
his pardon, as he bade his stepson come and see his death, be 
sure he had forgiven Pope, when he made ready to show how 
a Christian could die. 

Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short 
time, and describes himself in his letters as sitting with that 
coterie until two o'clock in the morning over punch and bur- 
gundy amidst the fumes of tobacco. To use an expression of 
the present day, the "pace " of those viveurs of the former age was 
awful. Peterborough lived into the ver}^ jaws of death ; Godol- 
phin labored all day and gambled at night ; Bolingbroke,* writ- 

* "Lord Bolingbroke to the Three Yahoos of Twickenham. 

" July 23, 1726. 

"Jonathan, Alexander, John, most excellent Triumvirs of Par- 
nassus, — Though you are probably very indifferent where I am, or what 
I am doing, yet I resolve to believe the contrary. I persuade myself that 
you have sent at least fifteen times within this fortnight to Dawley Farm, 
and that you are extremely mortified at my long silence. To relieve you, 
therefore, from this great anxiety of mind, I can do no less than write a 
few lines to you; and I please myself beforehand with the vast pleasure 
which this epistle must needs give you. That I ma}' add to this pleasure, 
and give further proofs of my beneficent temper, I will likewise inform 



PRIOR. GAY, AND POPE. 227 

ing to Swift, from Dawley, in his retirement, dating bis letter at 
six o'clock in the morning, and rising, as he sa3's, refreshed, 
serene, and calm, calls to mind the time of his London life ; 
when about that hour he used to be going to bed, surfeited 
with pleasure, and jaded with business ; his head often full of 
schemes, and his heart as often full of anxiety. It w^as too 
hard, too coarse a life for the sensitive, sickly Pope. He was 
the only wit of the day, a friend writes to me, who wasn't fat.*" 
Swift was fat ; Addison was fat ; Steele was fat ; Gay and 
Thomson were preposterously fat — all that fuddling and 
punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened 
the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age. 
Pope withdrew in a great measure from this boisterous London 
compan}', and being put into an independence by the gallant 
exertions of Swift t and his private friends, and by the enthu- 
siastic national admiration which justly rewarded his great 
achievement of the *' Iliad," purchased that famous villa of 
Twickenham which his song and life celebrated ; duteously 
bringing his old parent to live and die there, entertaining his 
friends there, and making occasional visits to London in his 
Jittle chariot, in which Atterbury compared him to '' Homer in 
a nutshell." 

''Mr. Drj'den was not a genteel man," Pope quaintly said 
to Spence, speaking of the manner and habits of the famous 
old patriarch of " Will's." With regard to Pope's own manners, 
we have the best contemporary authority that they were singu- 
larl}^ refined and polished. With his extraordinary sensibility, 
with his known tastes, with his delicate frame, with his power 
and dread of ridicule. Pope could have been no other than 
what we call a highl^^-bred person. | His closest friends, with 
the exception of Swift, were among the delights and ornaments 

you, that I shall he in your neighborhood again, by the end of next week : 
by which time I hope that Jonathan's imagination of business will be suc- 
ceeded by some imagination more becoming a professor of that divine sci- 
ence, la bagatelle. Adieu. Jonathan, Alexander, John, mirtli be with you ! " 

* Prior must be excepted from this observation. " He was lank and 
lean." 

t Swift exerted himself very much in promoting the " Iliad" subscrip- 
tion ; and also introduced Pope to Harley and Bolingbroke. — Pope realized 
by the " Iliad " upwards of 5,000/., which he laid out partly in annuities, 
and partly in the purchase of his famous villa. Johnson remarks that " it 
would be hard to find a man so well entitled to notice by his wit, that ever 
delighted so much in talking of his money." 

J "His (Pope's) voice in common conversation was so naturally musi- 
cal, that I remember honest Tom Southerne used always to call him ' the 
little nightingale.' " — Orrery. 



228 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

of the polished society of their age. Garth,* the accomplished 
and benevolent, whom Steele has described so charming!}', of 
whom Codrington said that his character was '-all beauty," 
and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without 
knowing it ; Arbuthnot,! one of the wisest, w'ittiest, most 

* Garth, whom Dryden calls " generous as his Muse," was a Yorkshire- 
man. He graduated at Cambridge, and was made M.D. in 1601. He soon 
distinguished himself in his profession, by his poem of the " Dispensary," 
and in society, and pronounced Dryden's funeral oration. He was a strict 
Whig, a notable member of the " Kit-Cat," and a friendly, convivial, able 
man. He was knighted by George 1., with the Duke of Marlborough's 
sword. He died in 1718. 

t " Arbutlmot was the son of an Episcopal clergyman in Scotland, and 
belAiged to an ancient and distinguished Scotch family. He was educated 
at Aberdeen; and, coming up to London — according to a Scotch practice 
often enough alluded to — to make his fortune — first made himself known 
by 'An Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge.' He 
became physician successively to Prince George of Denmark and to Queen 
Anne. He is usually allowed to have been the most learned, as well as 
one of the most witty and humorous members of the Scriblerus Club. The 
opinion entertained of him by the humorists of the day is abundantly 
evidenced in their correspondence. When he found himself in his last 
illness, he wrote thus, from his retreat at Hampstead, to Swift : — 

" ' Hampstead, Oct. 4, 1734. 

" * My Dear and Worthy Friend, — You have no reason to put me 
among the rest of your forgetful friends, for I wrote two long letters to 
you, to which I never received one word of answer. The first was about 
your health ; the last I sent a great while ago, by one De la Mar. I can 
assure you with great truth that none of your friends or acquaintance has 
a more warm heart towards you than myself. I am going out of this 
troublesome world, and you, among the rest of my friends, shall have my 
last prayers and good wishes. 

"*....! came out to this place so reduced by a dropsy and an asthma, 
thatl could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move. I most earnestly desired 
and begged of God that he would take me. Contrary to my expectation, 
upon venturing to ride (which I had forborne for some years), I recovered 
my strength to a pretty considerable degree, slept, and had my stomach 

again What I did, I can assure you was not for life, but ease ; for 

I am at present in the case of a man that was almost in harbor, and then 
blown back to sea — who has a reasonable hope of going to a good place, 
and an absolute certainty of leaving a very bad one. ISIot that I have any 
particular disgust at the world; for I have as great comfort in my own 
family and from the kindness of my friends as any man ; but the world, 
in the main, displeases me, and I have too true a presentiment of calamities 
that are to befall my country. However, if I should have the happiness 
to see you before I die, you will find that I enjoy the comforts of life with 
my usual cheerfulness. I cannot imagine why you are frightened from a 
journey to England : the reasons you assign are not sufficient — the jour- 
ney I am sure would do you good. In general, I recommend riding, of 
which I have always had a good opinion, and can now confirm it from my 
own experience. 

" ' My family give you their love and service. The great loss I sus- 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 229 

accomplished, gentlest of mankind ; Bolingbroke, the Alcibi- 
ades of his age ; the generous Oxford ; the magnificent, tlie 
witt}^ the famous, and' chivalrous Peterborough : these were 
the fast and faithful friends of Pope, the most brilliant compan}'- 
of friends, let us repeat, that the world has ever seen. The 
favorite recreation of his leisure hours was the societ}' of 
painters, whose art he practised. In his correspondence are 
letters between him and Jervas, whose pupil he loved to be — 
Richardson, a celebrated artist of his time, and who painted 
for him a portrait of his old mother, and for whose picture he 
asked and thanked Richardson in one of the most delightful 
letters that ever was penned,* — and the wonderful Kneller, who 

tained in one of them gave me my first shock, and the trouble I have with 
tlie rest to bring them to a right temper to bear the loss of a father who 
loves them, and whom they love, is really a most sensible affliction to me. 
I am afraid, my dear friend, we shall never see one another more in this 
world. I shall, to the last moment, preserve my love and esteem for you, 
being well assured you will never leave the paths of virtue and honor ; for 
all that is in tliis world is not worth the least deviation from the way. It 
will be great pleasure to me to hear from you sometimes; for none are 
with more sincerity tlian I am, my dear friend, your most faithful friend 
and humble servant.' " 

" Arbuthnot," Johnson says, " was a man of great comprehension, skil- 
ful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient litera- 
ture, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active 
imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who, in the 
crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardor of religious zeal." 

Dugald Stewart has testified to Arbuthnot's ability in a department of 
which he was particularly qualified to judge : "Let me add, that, in the 
list of philosophical reformers, the authors of ' Martinus Scriblerus ' ought 
not to be overlooked. Their happy ridicule of the" scholastic logic and 
metaphysics is universally known ; but few are aware of the acuteness 
and sagacity displayed in their allusions to some of the most vulnerable 
passages in Locke's ' Essay.' In this part of the work it is commonly 
understood that Arbuthnot had the principal share." — See Preliminary 
Dissertation to Encyclopcedia Britannica, note to p. 242, and also note b. b. b., 
p. 285. 

* " To Mr. Richardson. 

" Twickenham, June 10, 1733. 
" As I know you and I mutually desire to see one another, I hope that 
this day our wishes would have met, and brought you hither. And this 
for the very reason, which possibly might hinder you coming, that my poor 
mother is dead. I thank God, her death was as easy as her life was inno- 
cent ; and as it cost her not a groan, or even a sigh, there is yet upon her 
countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure, 
that it is even amiable to behold it. It would afford the finest image of a 
saint expired that ever painting drew ; and it would be the greatest obliga- 
tion which even that obliging art could ever bestow on a friend, if you 
could come and sketch it for me. I am sure, if tliere be no very prevalent 
obstacle, you vrill leave any common business to do this , and I hope to see 



230 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

bragged more, spelt worse, and painted better than any artist 
of liis day.* 

It is affecting to note, through Pope's Correspondence, the 
marked way in which his friends, the greatest, the most famous, 
and wittiest men of the time — generals and statesmen, philoso- 
l)hers and divines — all have a kind word and a kind thought 
ibr the good simple old mother, whom Pope tended so affection- 
atel}'. Those men would have scarceh- valued her, but that 
the}' knew how much he loved her, and that the}^ pleased him 
b}' thinking of her. If his earl}' letters to women are affected 
and insincere, whenever he speaks about this one, it is with a 
childish tenderness and an almost sacred simplicit}'. In 1713, 
when ,young Mr. Pope had, by a series of the most astonishing 
victories and dazzling achievements, seized the crown of poetry, 
and the town was in an uproar of admiration, or hostility, for 
the 3'oung chief; when Pope was issuing his famous decrees 
for the translation of the '"' Iliad ; " when Dennis and the lower 
critics were hooting and assailing him ; when Addison and 
the gentlemen of his court were sneering with sickening hearts 
at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror ; when Pope, 
in a fever of victor}', and genius, and hope, and anger, was 
struggling through the crowd of shouting friends and furious 
detractors to his temple of Fame, his old mother writes from 
the country, " My deare," says she — " My deare, there's Mr. 
Blount, of Maple Durom, dead the same day that Mr. Ingle- 
field died. Your sister is well ; but your brother is sick. My 
service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. I hope to hear 
from you, and that you are well, which is my daily prayer ; 
and this with my blessing." The triumph marches by, and the 
car of the young conqueror, the hero of a hundred brilliant 
victories : the fond mother sits in the quiet cottage at home 
and says, " I send you my daily prayers, and I bless you, my 
deare." 

In our estimate of Pope's character, let us always take into 

you this evening, as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, before 
this winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. 
I know you love me, or I could not have written this — I could not (at this 
time) have written at all. Adieu! May you die as happily ! 

" Yours," &c. 
* " Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, 
a Guinea trader, came in. 'Nephew,' said Sir Godfrey, 'you liave the 
lionor of seeing the two greatest men in the world.' — 'I don't know how 
great you maybe,' said the Guinea man, 'but I don't like your looks : I 
have often bought a man much better than both of you together, all muscles 
and bones, for ten guineas.' " — Dr. ^yARBURTON. Spence's Anecdotes. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 231 

account that constant tenderness and fidelit}' of affection which 
pervaded and sanctified his life, and never forget that maternal 
benediction.* It accompanied him alwa3's : his life seems 
purified by those artless and heartfelt prayers. And he seems 
to have received and deserved the fond attachment of the other 
members of his family. It is not a little touching to read in 
Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with which his half-sister 
regarded him, and the simple anecdote by which she illustrates 
her love. '' I think no man was ever so little fond of money." 
Mrs. Rackett says about her brother, " I think my brother 
when he was young read more books than any man in the 
world ; " and she falls to telling stories of his school-days, and 
the manner in which his master at Twyford ill-used him. "I 
don't think my brother knew what fear was," she continues ; 
and the accounts of Pope's friends bear out this character for 
courage. When he had exasperated the dunces, and threats 
of violence and personal assault were brought to him, the 
dauntless little champion never for one instant allowed fear to 
disturb him, or condescended to take any guard in his dail}' 
walks, except occasionally his faithful dog to bear him com- 
pany. " I had rather die at once," said the gallant little cripple, 
"' than live in fear of those rascals." 

As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked 
and enjoyed for himself — a euthanasia — a beautiful end. A 
perfect benevolence, affection, serenit}', hallowed the departure of 
that high soul. Even in the ver}' hallucinations of his brain, and 
weaknesses of his delirium, there was something almost sacred. 
Spence describes him in his last days, looking up and with a 
rapt gaze as if something had suddenly passed before him. 
*'He said to me, 'What's that?' pointing into the air with 
a very steady regard, and then looked down and said, with a 
smile of the greatest softness, ' 'Twas a vision ! '" He laughed 
scarcely ever, but his companions describe his countenance as 
often illuminated b}' a peculiar sweet smile. 

•'When," said Spence, t the kind anecdotist whom Johnson 

* Swift's mention of him as one 

*' whose filial piety excels 

Whatever Grecian story tells," 

is well known. And a sneer of Walpole's may be put to a better use than 
he ever intended it for, apropos of this subject. — He charitably sneers, in 
one of his letters, at Spence's " fondling an old mother — in imitation of 
Pope ! " 

t Joseph Spence was the son of a clergyman, near Winchester. He 
was a short time at Eton, and afterwards became a Fellow of New College, 



232 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

despised — "When I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. 
Pope, on ever}^ catching and recovery of his mind, was alwa3's 
sa3'ing something kindly of his present or absent friends ; and 
that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if humanit}^ 
had outlasted understanding, Lord Bolingbroke said, ' It has 
so,' and then added, ' I never in my life knew a man who had 
so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general 
friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, 
and value mj^self more for that man's love than — ' Here," 
Spence sa3's, " St. John sunk his head, and lost his voice in 
tears." The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words. 
It is the cloak thrown over the father's face in the famous 
Greek picture, which hides the grief and heightens it. 

In Johnson's "Life of Pope" you will find described, with 
rather a malicious minuteness, some of the personal habits and 
infirmities of the great little Pope. His bodj^ was crooked, he 
was so short that it was necessar}'' to raise his chair in order to 
place him on a level with other people at table.* He was 
sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and required a nurse 
like a child. His contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with 
a strange acrimon}^ and made his poor deformed person the 
butt for many a bolt of heav}'^ wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, 
in speaking of him, sa3's, " If 3'ou take the first letter of Mr. 
Alexander Pope's Christian name, and the first and last letters 
of his surname, 3'ou have A. P. E." Pope catalogues, at the 
end of the Dunciad, with a rueful precision, other prett3^ names, 
besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That great critic pro- 
nounced Mr. Pope was a little ass, a fool, a coward, a Papist, 
and therefore a hater of Scripture, and so forth. It must be 
remembered that the pillory was a flourishing and popular in- 
stitution in those days. Authors stood in it in the body some- 
times : and dragged their enemies thither morall3', hooted them 

Oxford, a clergyman, ana professor of poetry. He was a friend of Thorn* 
son's *whose reputation he aided. He publislied an " Essay on the Odys- 
sey " in 1726, which introduced him to Pope. Everybody liked him. His 
" Anecdotes " were placed, while still in MS., at the service of Johnson 
and also of Malone. They were published by Mr. Singer in 1820. 

* He speaks of Arbuthnot's having helped him through " that long dis- 
ease, my life." But not only was he so feeble as is implied in his use of 
the "buckram," but " it now appears," says Mr. Peter Cunningham, " from 
his unpublished letters, that, like Lord Hervey, he had recourse to ass's 
milk for the preservation of his health." It is to his lordship's use of that 
simple beverage that lie alludes when he says — 

*' Let Sporus tremble ! — A. What, that thing of silk, 
Sporus, that mere white-curd of ass's milk 1 " 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 233 

with foul abuse, and assailed them with garbage of the gutter. 
Poor Pope's figure was an easy one for those clumsy carica- 
turists to draw. An}' stupid hand could draw a hunchback, and 
write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published 
against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jest- 
ing was an evidence not only of an ill nature, but a dull one. 
When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, 
it is some very obvious combination of words, or discrepanc}^ 
of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles the 
boorish wag ; and many of Pope's revilers laughed, not so 
much because they were wicked, as because they knew no 
better. 

Without the utmost sensibilit}'. Pope could not have been 
the poet he was ; and through his life, however much he pro- 
tested that he disregarded their abuse, the coarse ridicule of 
his opponents stung and tore him. One of Gibber's pamphlets 
coming into Pope's hands, whilst Richardson the painter was 
with him. Pope turned round and said, "These things are my 
diversions ; " and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused 
the libel, said he saw his features "writhing with anguish." 
How little human nature changes ! Can't one see that little 
figure? Can't one fancy one is reading Plorace? Can't one 
fancy one is speaking of to-day ? 

The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to culti- 
vate the societ}^ of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, 
or beaut}^, caused him to shrink equall}' from that shabb}'^ and 
boisterous crew which formed the rank and file of literature in 
his time : and he was as unjust to these men as they to him. 
The delicate little creature sickened at habits and company 
which were quite tolerable to robuster men : and in the famous 
feud between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing 
an}^ peculiar wrong to either, one can quite understand how 
the two parties should so hate each other. As I fancy, it was 
a sort of necessity that when Pope's triumph passed, Mr. Addi- 
son and his men should look rather contemptuousl}^ down*on it 
from their balcon}'' ; so it was natural for Dennis and Tibbald, 
and Welsted and Cibber, and the worn and hungr}^ pressmen 
in the crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And Pope 
was more savage to Grub Street than Grub Street was to Pope. 
The thong with which he lashed them was dreadful ; he fired 
upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison, he 
slew and wounded so fiercel}', that in reading the " Dunciad" 
and the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side 
against the ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched 



234 / ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

folks upon whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and 
Swift to aid him, who estabUshed among us the Grub Street 
tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men's want ; 
he gloats over poor Dennis's garret, and flannel-nightcap, and 
red stockings ; he gives instructions how to find Curll's authors, 
the historian at the tallow-chandler's under the blind arch in 
Pett}^ France, the two translators in bed together, the poet in 
the cock-loft in Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. 
It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than any man who 
ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. It was not an 
unprosperous one before that timcj as we have seen ; at least 
there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addi- 
son a Minister, and Prior an Ambassador, and Steele a Com- 
missioner, and Swift all but a Bishop. The profession of 
letters was ruined b}^ that libel of the " Dunciad." If authors 
were wretched and poor before, if some of them lived in hay- 
lofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at least nobody 
came to disturb them in their straw ; if three of them had but 
one coat between them, the two remained invisible in the gar- 
ret, the third, at any rate, appeared decently at the coffee- 
house and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It was Pope 
that dragged into light all this poverty and meanness, and held 
up those wretched shifts and rags to public ridicule. It was 
Pope that has made generations of the reading world (delighted 
with the mischief, as who would not be that reads it?) believe 
that author and wretch, author and rags, author and dirt, author 
and drink, gin, cow-heel, tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squall- 
ing children and clamorous landladies, were always associated 
together. The condition of authorship began to fall from the 
days of the " Dunciad : " and I believe in my heart that much 
of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling was occa- 
sioned by Pope's libels and wicked wit. P^verybody read 
those. Everybody was famiUarized with the idea of the poor 
devil, the author.' The manner is so captivating that young 
authors practise it, and begin their career with satire. It is 
so easy to write, and so pleasant to read ! to fire a shot that 
makes a giant wince, perhaps ; and fancy one's self his con- 
queror. It is easy to shoot — but not as Pope did. The 
shafts of his satire rise sublimely: no poet's verse ever 
mounted higher than that wonderful flight with which the 
" Dunciad " concludes : — * 

* "He (Johnson) repeated to us, in liis forcible melodious manner, the 
concluding lines of the ' Dunciad.' " — Boswell. 



PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 235 

" She comes, she comes ! the sable throne behold 
Of Night primeval and of Chaos old ; 
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, 
And all its varying rainbows die away ; 
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, 
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. 
As, one by one, at dread Medea's strain 
The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain ; 
As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd, 
Closed, one by one, to everlasting rest ; — 
Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, 
Art after Art goes out, and all is night. 
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled. 
Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head ; 
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before. 
Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. 
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
And, unawares. Morality expires. 
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, 
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. 
Lo ! thy dread empire. Chaos, is restored. 
Light dies before thy uncreating word ; 
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, 
And universal darkness buries all." * 

In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very 
greatest height which his subhme art has attained, and shows 
himself the equal of all poets of all times. It is the brightest 
ardor, the loftiest assertion of truth, the most generous wisdom, 
illustrated by the noblest poetic figure, and spoken in words the 
aptest, grandest, and most harmonious. It is heroic courage 
speaking: a splendid declaration of righteous wrath and war. 
It is the gage flung down, and the silver trumpet ringing de- 
fiance to falsehood and tyranny, deceit, dulness, superstition. 
It is Truth, the champion, shining and intrepid, and fronting 
the great world-tyrant with armies of slaves at his back. It is 
a wonderful and victorious single combat in that great battle, 
which has alwa3's been waging since society began. 

In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try 
to show what it actually is, for that were vain ; but what it is 
like, and what are the sensations produced m the mind of him 
who views it. And in considering Pope's admirable career, I 
am forced into similitudes drawn from other courage and great- 
ness, and into comparing him with those who achieved triumphs 

* " Mr. Langton informed me that he once related to Johnson (on the 
authority of Spence), that Pope himself admired these lines so much that 
when he repeated them his voice faltered. ' And well it might, sir,' said 
Johnson, * for they are noble lines.' " — J. Boswell, junior. 



236 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

in actual war. I think of the works of young Pope as I do of 
the actions of young Bonaparte or 3'oung Nelson. In their 
common life 3'ou will find frailties and meannesses, as great as 
the vices and follies of the meanest men. But in the presence 
of the great occasion, the great soul flashes out, and conquers 
transcendent. In thinking of the splendor of Pope's young vic- 
tories, of his merit, unequalled as his renown, I hail and salute 
the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 



I SUPPOSE, as long as novels last and authors aim at interest- 
ing their public, there must alwaj^s^ be in the story a virtuous 
and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty 
girl who finds a champion ; bravery and virtue conquer beauty ; 
and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number 
of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when 
justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own. 
There never was perhaps a greatl}' popular story but this simple 
plot was carried through it : mere satiric wit is addressed to a 
class of readers and thinkers quite diflTerent to those simple 
souls who laugh and weep over the novel. I fancy very few 
ladies indeed, for instance, could be brought to like " Gulliver" 
heartih', and (putting the coarseness and difference of manners 
out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of " Jonathan 
Wild." In that strange apologue, the author takes for a hero 
the greatest rascal, coward, traitor, t^'i'ant, hypocrite, that his 
wit and experience, both large in this matter, could enable him 
to devise or depict ; he accompanies this villain through all the 
actions of his life, with a grinning deference and a wonderful 
mock respect : and doesn't leave him, till he is dangling at the 
gallows, when the satirist makes him a low bow and wishes the 
scoundrel good da}'. 

It was not by satire of this sort, or bj^ scorn and contempt, 
that Hogarth achieved his vast popular! t}' and acquired his repu- 
tation.* His art is quite simple,! he speaks popular parables to 

* Coleridge speaks of the "beautiful female faces" in Hogarth's pic- 
tures, " in whom," he says, " the satirist never extinguished that love of 
beauty which belonged to him as a poet." — The Friend. 

t "I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who, being asked 
which book he esteemed most in his library, answered ' Shakspeare : ' 



238 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

interest simple hearts, and to inspire them with pleasure or pitj^ 
or warning and terror. Not one of his tales but is as easj- as 
' ' Goody Twoshoes ; " it is the moral of Tommy was a naught}' 
boy and the master flogged him, and Jack}^ was a good bo}' 
and had plum-cake, which pervades the whole works of the 

being asked which he esteemed next best, replied ' Hogarth.' His graphic 
representations are indeed books: they have the teeming, fruitful, sug- 
gestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at — his prints we 
read 

" The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture 
would almost un vulgarize every subject which he might choose 

" I say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have necessarily 
something in them to make us like them ; some are indifferent to us, some 
in their nature repulsive, and only made interesting by the wonderful skill 
and truth to nature in the painter; but I contend that there is in most of 
them that sprinkling of the better nature, which, like holy water, chases 
away and disperses the contagion of the bad. They have this in them, 
besides, that they bring us acquainted with the every-day human face, — 
they give us skill to detect those gradations of sense and virtue (which 
escape the careless or fastidious observer) in the circumstances of the world 
about us ; and prevent that disgust at common life, that tcedium quotidia- 
nar urn fur mar urn, which an unrestricted passion for ideal forms and beauties 
is in danger of producing. In this, as in many other things, they ai*e 
analogous to the best novels of Smollett and Fielding." — Charles 
Lamb. 

" It has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are exceedingly unlike 
any other representations of the same kind of subjects — that they form a 
class, and have a character, peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while 
to consider in what this general distinction consists. 

" In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, hislorlcal pictures ; 
and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of ' Tom Jones ' ought to 
be regarded as an epic prose-poem, because it contained a regular develop- 
ment of fable, manners, character, and passion, the compositions of Ho- 
garth will, in like manner, be found to have a higher claim to the title of 
epic pictures than many which have of late arrogated that denomination 
to themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his subject historically, 
we mean that his works represent the manners and humors of mankind in 
action, and their characters by varied expression. Everything in his pic- 
tures has life and motion in it. Not only does the business of the scene 
never stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full play ; the 
exact feeling of the moment is brought out, and carried to its utmost height, 
and then instantly seized and stamped on the canvas for ever. The expres- 
sion is always taken en passant, in a state of progress or change, and, as it 

were, at the salient point His figures are not like the background 

on which they are painted : even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar 
look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, 
Hogarth's heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives 
the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect 
truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions 
from all others of the same kind, that tliey are equally remote from carica- 
ture, and fi'om mere still life His faces go to the very verge of cari- 
cature, and yet never {we believe in any single instance) go beyond it." — 
Hazlitt. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 289 

homely and famous English moraUst. And if the moral is 
written in rather too large letters after the fable, we must re- 
member how simple the scholars and schoolmaster both were, 
and like neither the less because the}^ are so artless and honest. 
''It was a maxim of Dr. Harrison's," Fielding saj's, in 
"Amelia," — speaking of the benevolent divine and philoso- 
pher who represents the good principle in that novel — ' ' that 
no man can descend below himself, in doing an}^ act which may 
contribute to protect an innocent person, or to bring a rogue to the 
gallows." The moralists of that age had no compunction, 3'ou 
see ; they had not begun to be sceptical about the theor}^ of 
punishment, and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spec- 
tacle for edification. Masters sent their apprentices, fathers 
took their children, to see Jack Sheppard or Jonathan Wild 
hanged, and it was as undoubting subscribers to this moral law, 
that Fielding wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one in- 
stance, where, in the mad-house scene in the " Rake's Progress," 
the girl whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and 
weeping over him in his insanity, a glimpse of pit}" for his 
rogues never seems to enter honest Hogarth's mind. There's 
not the slightest doubt in the breast of the J0II3' Draco. 

The famous set of pictures called " Marriage a la Mode," 
and which are now exhibited in the National Gallery in Lon- 
don, contains the most important and highly wrought of the 
Hoo'arth comedies. The care and method with which the 
moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as 
the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He 
has to describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between 
the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and j^oung Lord Vis- 
count Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl. 
Pride and pomposity appear in every accessory surrounding 
the Earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet — as how should 
such an Earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace ? His 
coronet is ever}" where : on his footstool, on which reposes one 
gouty toe turned out ; on the sconces and looking-glasses ; on 
the dogs ; on his lordship's very crutches ; on his great chair 
of state and the great baldaquin behind him; under which he 
sits pointing majesticalty to his pedigree, which shows that his 
race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and 
confronting the old Alderman from the Cit}", who has mounted 
his sword for the occasion, and wears his Alderman's chain, 
and has brought a bag full of mone}^, mortgage-deeds, and 
thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement of the transaction 
pending between them. Whilst the steward (a Methodist — 



240 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

therefore a hj'pocrite and cheat : for Hogarth scorned a Papist 
and a Dissenter,) is negotiating between the old couple, their 
children sit together, united but apart. M}^ lord is admiring 
his countenance in the glass, while his bride is twiddling her 
marriage ring on her pocket-handkerchief, and Ustening with 
rueful countenance to Counsellor Silvertongue, who has been 
drawing the settlements. The girl is prett}', but the painter, 
with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a like- 
ness to her father ; as in the young Viscount's face 3'ou see a 
resemblance to the Earl, his noble sire. The sense of the cor- 
onet pervades the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of 
its wearer. The pictures round the room are slj^ hints indi- 
cating the situation of the parties about to marry. A mart3T 
is led to the fire ; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice ; Judith is 
going to sla}^ Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the house 
(in the picture it is the Earl himself as a j^oung man) , with a 
comet over his head, indicating that the career of the famil}^ is 
to be brilliant and brief. In the second picture, the old lord 
must be dead, for Madam has now the Countess's coronet over 
her bed and toilet-glass, and sits listening to that dangerous 
Counsellor SilvertongTie, whose portrait now actually hangs 
up in her room, whilst the counsellor takes his ease on the 
sofa by her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the 
confidant of the mistress. My lord takes his pleasure else- 
where than at home, whither he returns jaded and tipsy from 
the " Rose," to find his wife yawning in her drawing-room, her 
whist-part}^ over, and the daylight streaming in ; or he amuses 
himself with the verj^ worst compan}^ abroad, whilst his wife 
sits at home hstening to foreign singei^s, or wastes her money 
at auctions, or, worse still, seeks amusement at masquerades. 
The dismal end is known. M}^ lord draws upon the counsellor, 
who kills him, and is apprehended whilst endeavoring to es- 
cape. My lady goes back perforce to the Alderman in the 
City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue's dying 
speech at Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for 
sending his lordship out of the world. Moral: — Don't listen 
to evil silver-tono-ued counsellors : don't marrv a man for his 
rank, or a woman for her mone}' : don't frequent fooUsh auc- 
tions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband : don't 
have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, other- 
wise 3'ou will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, 
and disgrace, and Tyburn. The people are all naught}', and 
Boge}^ carries them all off. In the " Rake's Progress," a loose 
life is ended by a similar sad catastrophe. It is the spendthrift 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 241 

coming into possession of the wealtli of the paternal miser ; 
the prodigal surrounded b}^ flatterers, and wasting his substance 
on the very worst company ; the baiUffs, the gambling-house, 
and Bedlam for an end. In the famous story of " Industr}^ 
and Idleness," the moral is pointed in a manner similarly clear. 
Fair-haired Frank Goodchild smiles at his work, whilst naughty 
Tom Idle snores over his loom. Frank reads the edifying bal- 
lads of " Wliittington " and the " London 'Prentice," whilst 
that reprobate Tom Idle prefers "Moll Flanders," and drinks 
hugely of beer. Frank goes to church of a Sunday, and war- 
bles hymns from the gallery ; while Tom lies on a tombstone 
outside playing at " halfpennj'-under-the-hat " with street black- 
guards, and is deservedly caned by the beadle. Frank is made 
overseer of the business, whilst Tom is sent to sea. Frank is 
taken into partnership and marries his master's daughter, sends 
out broken victuals to the poor, and listens in his nightcap 
and gown, with the lovel}'^ Mrs. Goodchild b}'^ his side, to the 
nuptial music of the City bands and the marrowbones and 
cleavers ; whilst idle Tom, returned from sea, shudders in a 
garret lest the officers are coming to take him for picking pock- 
ets. The Worshipful Francis Goodchild, Esq., becomes Sheriff 
of London, and partakes of the most splendid dinners which 
mone}^ can purchase or Alderman devour ; whilst poor Tom is 
taken up in a night-cellar, with that one-ej'ed and disreputable 
accomplice who first taught him to plaj' chuck-farthing on a 
Sunday. What happens next? Tom is brought up before the 
justice of his country, in the person of Mr. Alderman Good- 
child, who weeps as he recognizes his old brother 'prentice, as 
Tom's one-eyed friend peaches on him, and the clerk makTes 
out the poor rogue's ticket for Newgate. Then the end comes. 
Tom goes to Tyburn in a cart with a coffin in it ; whilst the 
Right Honorable Francis Goodchild, Lord Mayor of London, 
proceeds to his Mansion House, in his gilt coach with four 
footmen and a sword-bearer, whilst the Companies of Loudon 
march in the august procession, whilst the trainbands of the 
City fire their pieces and get drunk in his honor; and — O 
crowning delight and glory of all — whilst his INIajesty the 
King looks out from his ro^al balcony, with his ribbon on his 
breast, and his Queen and his star by his side, at the corner 
house of St. Paul's Churchyard. 

How the times have changed ! The new Post Office now 
not disadvantageously occupies that spot where the scaffolding 
is in the picture, where the tips}' trainband-man is lurching 

against the post, with hi3 wig over one eye, and the 'prentice- 

13 



242 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

boy is trying to kiss the pretty girl in the gallery. Passed 
away 'prentice-boy and prett3^ girl ! Passed away tipsy train- 
band-man with wig and bandolier ! On the spot where Tom 
Idle (for whom I have an unaffected pit}^) made his exit from 
this wicked world, and where you see the hangman smoking 
his pipe as he reclines on the gibbet and views the hills of Har- 
row or Hampstead be3'ond, a splendid marble arch, a vast and 
modern city — clean, airj-, painted drab, populous with nursery- 
maids and children, the abode of wealth and comfort — the 
elegant, the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the most 
respectable district in the habitable globe ! 

In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the 
apotheosis of the Right Honorable Francis Goodchild is drawn, 
a ragged fellow is represented in the corner of the simple, 
kindly piece, offering for sale a broadside, purporting to con- 
tain an account of the appearance of the ghost of Tom Idle, 
executed at Tyburn. Could Tom's ghost have made its appear- 
ance in 1847, and not in 1747, what changes would have been 
remarked by that astonished escaped criminal ! Over that road 
which the hangman used to travel constantly, and the Oxford 
stage twice a week, go ten thousand carriages ever}' day ; over 
yonder road, by which DickTurpin fled to Windsor, and Squire 
Western journe3'ed into town, when he came to take up his 
quarters at the " Hercules Pillars " on the outskirts of London, 
what a rush of civilization and order flows now ! What armies 
of gentlemen with umbrellas march to banks, and chambers, 
and counting-houses ! What regiments of nurserj' -maids and 
prett}" infantry ; what peaceful processions of policemen, what 
light broughams and what gay carriages, what swarms of busy 
apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, pass dail^^ 
and hourly ! Tom Idle's times are quite changed : many of the 
institutions gone into disuse which were admired in his day. 
There's more pit}' and kindness and a better chance for poor 
Tom's successors now than at that simpler period when Field- 
ing hanged him and Hogarth drew him. 

To the student of history, these admirable work's must be 
invaluable, as the}' give us the most complete and truthful pic- 
ture of the manners, and even the thoughts, of the past century. 
We look, and see pass before us the England of a hundred years 
ago — the peer in his drawing-room, the lady of fashion in her 
apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and the chamber 
filled with gewgaws in the mode of that day ; the church, with 
its quaint florid architecture and singing congregation ; the 
parson with his great wig, and the beadle with his cane : all 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 243 

these are represented before us, and we are sure of the truth of 
the portrait. We see how the Lord Ma3'or dines in state ; how 
the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio ; how the poor girl 
beats hemp in Bridewell ; how the thief divides his booty and 
drinks his punch at the night-cellar, and how he finishes his 
career at the gibbet. We may depend upon the perfect accu- 
racy of these strange and varied portraits of the bygone genera- 
tion : we see one of Walpole's Members of Parliament chaired 
after his election, and the lieges celebrating the event, and 
drinking confusion to the Pretender : we see the grenadiers 
and trainbands of the City marching out to meet the enemy ; and 
have before us, with sword and firelock, and white Hanoverian 
horse embroidered on the cap, the very figures of the men who , 
ran away with Johnny Cope, and who conquered at Culloden. * 
The Yorkshire wagon rolls into the inn-yard ; the countrj' par- 
son, in his jack-boots and his bands and short cassock, comes 
trotting into town, and we fancy it is Parson Adams, with his 
sermons in his pocket. The Salisbury fly sets forth from the 
old " Angel " — you see the passengers entering the great heavy 
vehicle, up the wooden steps, their hats tied down with handker- 
chiefs over their faces, and under their arms, sword, hanger, and 
case-bottle ; the landlady — apoplectic with the liquors in her 
own bar —is tugging at the bell ; the hunchbacked postilion — 
he may have ridden the leaders to Humphrey Clinker — is beg- 
ging a gratuity ; the miser is grumbling at the bill ; Jack of 
the " Centurion " lies on the top of the clumsy vehicle, with a 
soldier by his side — it may be Smollett's Jack Hatchway — it 
has a likeness to Lismahago. You see the suburban fair and the 
strolling company of actors ; the pretty milkmaid singing under 
the windows of the enraged French musician : it is such a girl 
as Steele charmingly described in the Guardian^ a few years 
before this date, singing, under Mr. Ironside's window in Shire 
Lane, her pleasant carol of a Ma3' morning. You see noblemen 
and blacklegs bawling and betting in the Cockpit : you see 
Garrick as he was arrayed in " King Richard ; " Macheath and 
Polly in the dresses which they wore when they charmed our 
ancestors, and when noblemen in blue ribbons sat on the stage 
and listened to their delightful music. You see the ragged 
French soldiery, in their white coats and cockades, at Calais 
Gate : they are of the regiment, very likely, which friend Rod- 
erick Random joined before he was rescued by his preserver 
Monsieur de Strap, with whom he fought on the famous daj^ of 
Dettingen. You see the judges on the bench ; the audience 
laughing in the pit ; the student in the Oxford theatre ; the 



244 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

citizen on his country walk ; 3'ou see Broughton the boxer, 
Sarah Malcolm the murderess, Simon Lovat the traitor, John 
Wilkes the demagogue, leering at 3'ou with that squint which 
has become historical, and that face which, ugly as it was, he 
said he could make as captivating to woman as the countenance 
of the handsomest beau in town. All these sights and people 
are with 3^ou. After looking in the "Rake's Progress" at 
Hogarth's picture of St. James's Palace Gate, you may people 
the street, but little altered within these hundred years, with 
the gilded carriages and thronging chairmen that bore the 
courtiers your ancestors to Queen Caroline's drawing-room 
more than a hundred years ago. 

What manner of man * was he who executed these portraits 

* Hogarth (whose family name was Hogart) was the grandson of a 
Westmoreland yeoman. His father came to London, and was an author 
and schoolmaster. William was born in 1698 (according to the most 
probable conjecture) in the Parish of St. Martin, Ludgate. He was early 
apprenticed to an engraver of arms on plate. The following touches are 
from his " Anecdotes of himself." (Edition of 1833.) 

" As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows of 
all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant ; and mimicry, com- 
mon to all cliildren, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighbor- 
ing painter drew my attention from play ; and I Avas, at every possible 
opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up an acquaintance 
of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with great correct- 
ness. My exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the orna- 
ments which adorned them, than for the exercise itself. In the former, I 
soon found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me ; 
but for the latter I was particularly distinguished 

" I thought it still more unlikel}' that by pursuing the common method, 
and copying old drawings, I could ever attain the power of making new 
designs, which was my first and greatest ambition. I therefore endeavored 
to habituate myself to the exercise of a sort of technical memory ; and by 
repeating in my own mind the parts of which objects were composed, I 
could by degrees combine and put them down with my pencil. Thus, with 
all the drawbacks which resulted from the circumstances I have mentioned, 
I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz. the early habit I 
thus acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying it on 
the spot, whatever I intended to imitate. 

" The instant I became master of ray own time, I determined to qualify 
myself for engraving on copper. In this I readily got employment ; and 
frontispieces to books, such as prints to ' Hudibras,' in twelves, &c., soon 
brought me into the way. But the tribe of booksellers remained as my 
father had left them .... which put me upon publishing on my own 
account. But here again I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, 
equally mean and destructive to the ingenious ; for the first plate I pub- 
lished, called 'The Taste of the Town,' in which the reigning follies were 
lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the 
print-shops, vending at half-price, while the original prints were returned to 
me again, and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates 
pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops. Owing 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 24^ 

■^- so various, so faithful, and so admirable ? In the National 
Collection of Pictures most of us have seen the best and most 

to this, and other circumstances, by engraving, until I was nearly thirty, I 
could do little more than maintain myself ; but even then, I was a punctual 
paymaster. 

" I then married, and — " 

[But William is going too fast here. He made "a stolen union," on 
March 23, 1729, with Jane, daughter of Sir James Thornhill, serjeant- 
painter. For some time Sir James kept his heart and his purse-strings 
close, but " soon after became both reconciled and generous to the young 
couple." — Hogarth's Works, by Nichols and Steevens, vol. i. p. 44.] 

" — commenced painter of small Conversation Pieces, from twelve to 
fifteen inches high. This, being a novelty, succeeded for a few years." 

[About this time Hogarth had summer lodgings at South Lambeth, and 
did all kinds of work, " embellishing" the " Spring Gardens " at " Vauxhall," 
"and the like. In 1731, he published a satirical plate against Pope, founded 
on the well-known imputation against him of his having satirized the Duke 
of Chandos, under the name of Timon, in his poem on " Taste." The plate 
represented a view of Burlington House, with Pope whitewashing it, and 
bespattering the Duke of Chandos's coach. Pope made no retort, and has 
never mentioned Hogarth.] 

" Before I had done anything of much consequence in this walk, I en- 
tertained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call TJie 
Great Style of History Painting ; so that without having had a stroke of this 
grand business before, I quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, 
and with a smile at my own temerity, commenced history-painter, and on 
a great staircase at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, painted two Scripture 
stories, the ' Pool of Bethesda ' and the ' Good Samaritan,' with figures 

seven feet high But as religion, the great promoter of this style in 

other countries, rejected it in England, I was unwilling to sink into a portrait 
manufacturer ; and still ambitious of being singular, dropped all expectations 
of advantage from that source, and returned to the pursuit of my former 
dealings with the public at large. 

" As to portrait-painting, the chief branch of the art by which a painter 
can procure himself a tolerable livelihood, and the only one by which a 
lover of money can get a fortune, a man of very moderate talents may have 
great success in it, as the artifice and address of a mercer is infinitely more 
useful than the abilities of a painter. By the manner in which the present 
race of Professors in England conduct it, that also becomes still life." 

• ••••••• 

" By this inundation of folly and puff " [he has been speaking of the suc- 
cess of Vanloo, who came over here in 1737), " I must confess I was much dis- 
gusted, and determined to try if by any means I could stem the torrent, 
and, by opposing, end it. I laughed at the pretensions of these quacks in 
coloring, ridiculed their productions as feeble and contemptible, and as- 
serted that it required neither taste nor talents to excel their most popular 
performances. This interference excited much enmity, because, as my 
opponents told me, my studies were in another way. ' You talk,' added 
they, * with ineffable contempt of portrait-painting ; if it is so easy a task, 
why do not you convince the world, by painting a portrait yourself 1 ' 
Provoked at this language, I, one day at the Academy in St. Martin's Lane, 
put the following question : ' Supposing any man, at this time, were to 
paint a portrait as well as Vandyke, would it be seen or acknowledged, 



240 Ejj^gltsh humorists. 

carefnll}' finished series of his comic paintings, and the portrait 
of his own honest face, of which the bright blue eyes shine out 

and could the artist enjoy the benefit or acquire the reputation due to his 
performance 1 ' 

" They asked me in reply, If I could paint one as well ? and I frankly 
answered, I believed I could 

" Of the mighty talents said to be requisite for portrait-painting I had 
not the most exalted opinion." 

Let us now hear him on the question of the Academy : — 

" To pester the three great estates of the empire, about twenty or thirty 
students drawing after a man or a horse, appears, as must be acknowl- 
edged, foolish enough : but the real motive is, that a few bustling characters, 
who have access to people of rank, think they can thus get a superiority 
over their brethren, be appointed to places, and have salaries, as in France, 
for telling a lad when a leg or an arm is too long or too short 

" France, ever aping the magnificence of other nations, has in its turn 
assumed a foppish kind of splendor sufficient to dazzle the eyes of the 
neighboring states, and draw vast sums of money from this country 

" To return to our Royal Academy : I am told that one of their leading 
objects will be, sending young men abroad to study the antique statues, 
for such kind of studies may sometimes improve an exalted genius, but 
they will not create it; and whatever has been the cause, this same trav- 
elling to Italy has, in several instances that I have seen, 'reduced the stu- 
dent from nature, and led him to paint marble figures, in which he has 
availed himself of the great works of antiquity, as a coward does when he 
puts on the armor of an Alexander ; for, with similar pretensions and simi- 
lar vanity, the painter supposes he shall be adored as a second Raphael 
Urbino." 

We must now hear him on his " Sigismunda : " — 

" As the most violent and virulent abuse thrown on ' Sigismunda ' was 
from a set of miscreants, wdth whom I am proud of having been ever at 
war — I mean the expounders of the mysteries of. old pictures — I have 
been sometimes told they were beneath my notice. This is true of them 
individually; but as they have access to people of rank, who seem as 
happy in being cheated as these merchants are in cheating them, tliey have 
a power of doing much mischief to a modern artist. However mean the 
vender of poisons, the mineral is destructive: — to me its operation was 
troublesome enougli. Ill nature spreads so fast that now was the time for 
every little dog in the profession to bark ! " 

Next comes a characteristic account of his controversy with Wilkes 
and Churchill. 

" The stagnation rendered it necessary that I should do some timed 
thing, to recover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income. This drew 
forth my print of ' The Times,' a subject which tended to the restoration 
of peace and unanimity, and put the opposers of these humane objects in 
a light which gave great offence to those who were trying to foment dis- 
affection in the minds of the populace. One of the most notorious of them, 
till now my friend and flatterer, attacked me in the North Briton, in so in- 
famous and malign a style, that he himself, when pushed even by his best 
friends, was driven to so poor an excuse as to say he was drunk when he 
wrote it 

" This renowned patriot's portrait, drawn like as I could as to features, 
and marked with some indications of his mind, fully answered my pur- 
pose. The ridiculous was apparent to every eye! A Brutus! A savior 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 247 

from the canvas and give j'ou an idea of that keen and brave 
look with which William Hogarth regarded the world. No 
man was ever less of a hero ; you see him before you, and can 
fancy what he was — a jovial, honest London citizen, stout and 
sturdy ; a hearty, plain-spoken man,* loving his laugh, his 
friend, his glass, his roast-beef of Old England, and having a 
proper bourgeois scorn for French frogs, for mounseers, and 
wooden shoes in general, for foreign fiddlers, foreign singers, 
and, above all, for foreign painters, whom he held in the most 
amusing contempt. 

It must have been great fun to hear him rage against Cor- 
reggio and the Carracci ; to watch him thump the table and 
snap his fingers, and say, " Flistorical painters be hanged: 
here's the man that will paint against any of them for a hundred 
pounds. Correggio's ' Sigismunda ! ' Look at Bill Hogarth's 
' Sigismunda ; ' look at my altar-piece at St. Mary Redcliffe, 

of his country with such an aspect — was so arrant a farce, that though it 
gave rise to much laughter in the lookers-on, galled both him and his ad- 
herents to the bone 

" Churchill, Vllkes's toad-echo, put the North Briton into verse, in an 
Epistle to Hogarth ; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a 
little poetical heightening, which goes for nothing, it made no impression. 
.... However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready, such as 
the background and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much 
work laid aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master 
Churchill in the character of a Bear. The pleasure and pecuniary advan- 
tage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occasionally 
riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at 
my time of life." 

* " It happened in the early part of Hogarth's life, that a nobleman 
who was uncommonly ugly and deformed came to sit to him for his picture. 
It was executed with a skill that did honor to the artist's abilities ; but the 
likeness was rigidly observed, without even the necessary attention to com- 
pliment or flattery. The peer, disgusted at this counterpart of himself, 
never once thought of paying for a reflection that would only disgust him 
with his deformities. Some time was suffered to elapse before the artist 
applied for his money ; but afterwards many applications were made by 
him (who had then no need of a banker) for payment, without success. 

The painter, however, at last hit upon an expedient It was couched 

in the following card : — 

" * Mr, Hogarth's dutiful respects to Lord . Finding that he does 

not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again 
of Mr. Hogarth's necessity for the money. If, therefore, his Lordship does 
not send for it in three days it will be disposed of, with the addition of a 
tail, and some other little appendages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild-beast 
man : Mr. Hogarth having given that gentleman a conditional promise of 
it, for an exhibition-picture, on his Lordship's refusal.' 

"This intimation had the desired effect." — Worhs^hy Nichols and 
Steevens, vol. i. p. 25. 



248 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Bristol ; look at my ' Paul before Felix,' and see whether I'm 
not as good as the best of them." * 

Posterity' has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth's opinion 
about his talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not 
see the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, pos- 
terity has not shared the Dean's contempt for Handel ; the 
world has discovered a difference between tweedle-dee and 
tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause and admiration to 
Hogarth, too, but not exactly as a painter of scriptural sub- 
jects, or as a rival of Correggio. It does not take away from 
one's liking for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the 
humor of it — from one's admiration for the prodigious merit of 
his performances, to remember that he persisted to the last in 
believing that the world was in a conspiracy against him with 
respect to his talents as an historical painter, and that a set of 
miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius 
down. They say it was ListOn's firm belief that he was a great 
and neglected tragic actor ; the}^ say that ever}^ one of us be- 
lieves in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he 
is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of 
the " miscreants," Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who assailed him 
in the North Briton ; the other was Churchill, who put the North 
Briton attack into heroic verse, and published his " Epistle to 
Hogarth." Hogarth replied hy that caricature of Wilkes, in 
which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic grin 
and squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he is 
represented as a bear with a staff, on which, lie the first, lie the 
second — lie the tenth, are engraved in unmistakable letters. 
There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth's satire : if 

* " Garrick himself was not more ductile to flattery. A word in favor of 
* Sigismunda ' might have commanded a proof-print or forced an original 
print out of our artist's hands " 

" The following authenticated story of our artist (furnished by the late 
Mr. Belchior, F.R.S., a. surgeon of eminence) will also serve to show how 
much more easy it is to detect ill-placed or hyperbolical adulation respect- 
ing others, than when applied to ourselves. Hogarth, being at dinner with 
the great Cheselden and some other company, was told that Mr. John Freke, 
surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a few evenings before at Dick's 
Coffee-House, had asserted that Greene was as eminent in composition as 
Handel. ' That fellow Freke,' replied Hogarth, ' is always shooting his bolt 
absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music ; Greene only 
a Hght Florimel kind of a composer.-* ' Ay,' says our artist's informant, 
'but at the same time Mr. Freke declared you 'were as good a portrait- 
painter as Vandyke.' ' There he was right,' adds Hogarth, ' and so, by 
G — , I am, give me my time and let me choose my subject.' " — Works^ 
by Nichols and Steevens, vol i. pp. 236, 337. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING'. 249 

he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with 
his head almost off ; and he tried to do the same for his enemies 
in this Uttle controversy'. " Having an old plate b}^ me," sa3's 
he, "with some parts read}^, such as the background and a 
dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid 
aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master 
Churchill, in the character of a bear ; the pleasure and pecun- 
iary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, 
together with occasionalh^ riding on horseback, restored me to 
as much health as I can expect at my time of life." 

And so he concludes his queer little book of Anecdotes : " I 
have gone through the circumstances of a life which till lately- 
passed prett}^ much to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no 
respect injurious to any other man. This I may safely assert, 
that I have done m}- best to make those about me tolerably 
happy, and m}" greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an inten- 
tional injur}'. What may follow, God knows." 

A queer account still exists of a holida}' jaunt taken hy 
Hogarth and four friends of his, who set out, like the redoubted 
Mr. Pickwick and his companions, but just a hundred years 
before those heroes ; and made an excursion to Gravesend, 
Rochester, Sheerness, and adjacent places.* One of the gen- 
tlemen noted down the proceedings of the journej', for which 
Hogarth and a brother artist made drawings. The book is 
chiefly curious at this moment from showing the citizen life of 
those days, and the rough J0II3' style of merriment, not of the 
five companions merel}', but of thousands of jolly fellows of 
their time. Hogarth and his friends, quitting the "Bedford 
Arms," Covent Garden, with a song, took water to Billings- 
gate, exchanging compliments with the bargemen as the}^ went 
down the river. At Billingsgate, Hogarth made a " caraca- 
tura" of a facetious porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, 
who agreeably entertained the part}^ with the humors of the 
place. Hence they took a Gravesend boat for themselves ; 
had straw to lie upon, and a tilt over their heads, they say, 
and went down the river at night, sleeping and singing jolly 
choruses. 

They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their 
faces and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they 
sallied forth for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three 
pots of ale. At one o'clock they went to dinner with excellent 

* He made this excursion in 1732, his companions being John Thorn- 
hill (son of Sir James). Scott, the landscape-painter, Tothall, and For- 
rett. 



250 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

port, and a quantitj^ more beer,~ and afterwards Hogarth and 
Scott played at hopscotch m the town hail. It would appear 
that the}' slept most of them in one room, and the chronicler of 
the party describes them all as waiving at seven o'clock, and 
telling each other their dreams. You have rough sketches by 
Hogarth of the incidents of this holiday excursion. The sturdy 
little painter is seen sprawling over a plank to a boat at Graves- 
end ; the whole compan}^ are represented in one design, in a 
fisherman's room, where they had all passed the night. One 
gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself ; another is being 
shaved by the fisherman ; a third, wdth a handkerchief over his 
bald pate, is taking his breakfast ; and Hogarth is sketching the 
whole scene. 

They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, 
drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good 
flip, all singing merril3^ 

It is a jolly partj^ of tradesmen engaged at high jink-^ These 
were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of hiF.^ ...e very 
likely, of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It is a 
brave London citizen, with John Bull habits, prejudices, and 
pleasures.* 

Of Smollett's associates and manner of life the author of 



* " Dr. Johnson made four lines once, on the death of poor Hogarth, 
which were equally true and pleasing ; I know not why Garrick's were pre- 
ferred to them : — 

" ' The hand of him here torpid lies, , 

That drew th' essential forms of grace ; 
Here, closed in death, th' attentive eyes, 
That saw the manners in the face.' 

" Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shown to me when I 
was too young to have a proper sense of them, was used to be very earnest 
that I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible the friendship, of 
Dr. Johnson ; whose conversation was, to the talk of other men, like Ti- 
tian's painting compared to Hudson's, he said : ' but don't you tell people 
now that I say so,' continued he ; ' for the connoisseurs and I are at war, 
you know ; and because I hate them, they think I hate Titian — and let 
them!' .... Of Dr Johnson, when my father and he were talking about 
him one day, ' That man,' says Hogarth, * is not contented with believing 
the Bible ; but he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing but the Bible. 
Johnson,' added he, 'though so wise a fellow, is more like King David than 
King Solomon, for he says in his haste All men are liars."' — Mrs. Piozzi. 

" Hogarth died on the 26th of October, 1764. The day before his 
death, he was removed from his villa at Chiswick to Leicester Fields, " in 
a very weak condition, yet remarkably cheerful." He had just received 
an agreeable letter from Franklin. He lies buried at Chiswick. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 



251 



the admirable ' ' Humphrey Clinker " has given us an interesting 
account, in that most amusing of novels. 

* u To Sir Watkin Phillips, Bart., of Jesus College, 

OXON. 

-o ^o Tn mv last I mentioned ray having spent an even- 

" Dear ^"^^"J/' ^J" J'Uo 1^^^ be jealous and afraid of one 

ing with a society of a"*^°^^' J^^'^.f ,,"!:rised to hear me say I was disap- 
anot4ier. My micle was not at all ^rZy be Very entertaining and in- 
pointed in their conversation. , ^l^xceeSly dull in common discourse. 
Luctive upon paper ' f,^;^^ who shine mos in private company are but 
I have observed, that those who shine mosi y t- .^ 

secondary stars in the constellation of genu. A ^'^^^^ ':^ . ^^^^^.^ 
„,ore easily maiia^ed and soo^^^^^^^^^ ,1 ,,, J 

together ^heie is very seiiom J ^ ^^^ ^^^1^^^ generally distin- 
"^s^^J^ some o^dr^'orlxtravagance. ,Eor this reason I fancy 

fl^t an assembly^of grubs --^.^^^J^tnt "Consulted my friend Dick 
" My curiosity bemg excited by this hint iconsu ^ > g^^^^ 

Ivy, who undertook to ^f^^ V^^^^U fou a^d I have longknow^ 
last. He carried me ^ di^ wi^^ ^^^^^ ^7 l,e town ; and every Sunday his 
by his w gs. He lives ^^ Jf^^,^™_ quill, whom he treats with 

house iL op., to all unfortunate brotesot the q^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ 

beef, pudding, ^nd potatoes port P^^^^^^^^^^ X^^^^^^^^ «^ ^^' ^^^'P^' 
He has fixed upon the ^^^^^^^/^^f could not^^^^^^^^ it on any other, for rea- 
tality, because some ^f Y':,f ^\'\;as c^^iUy receiVed in a plain, yet decent 
sons that I need not ^^P^^"^; , ^^^.X Tnto a very pleasant garden, kept in 
habitation, which opened backwards into a very P | ^ ^^^1^^^.. 

excellent order; and, ^"^^^f ' ^/^^J^^^^^^ ,fho is one of thofe few writers 
ship either m the house or tli.e 1^"^^%^' ^^^''^ J° ^.^hout patronage, and 

t°»mprn/made ample amends for Ms want of^.^ ^^^^^ 

at :^:r:^^ ^^'^^^^^^^-ts. 
s^^:ftLrwtrfp|Lf^^^^^^ 

iti lYs ^el^a ; ™VZ"£ SiSS^aJ: -ent ^s 
weakness or defect of "7"- 1 hSl eves by a pLye , wUl whom he had 

~"P"l'dfn^l' drtak™! H> rd wtreTlaTed s^oJking, and made use of 
quarrelled m his dnnk. -^ ™ ™ "" , , v ij^jj up w th a broken leg, 
crutches, because, once m his life, n^ had heen^ia v ^^^^^^^^ ,^^^, 

though no man could leap over a s'lck vvith ™je "S 7 ^ sitting 

contracted such an antipathy to *e<f™Xd into the garden ; and when 
with his back towards the "■"do"' 'hat 1^^ ^"^^^^^^ ^p volatile salts to 
, a dish of cauliflo,yer was se «Pf " *^^\f '%^^^^^ of a cottager, 

nm.t«^?p:rronSrsrsu3n^^^^^^^^^^ 
Ssi^d si^iie^drrs ie iS ^&^':^. 



252 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

I have no doubt that this picture b}^ Smollett is as faithful a 
one as any from the pencil of his kindred humorist, Hogarth. 

" At first, I really' thought he was mad ; and, as he sat near me, began 
to be under some apprehensions for my own safety ; when our landlord, 
perceiving me alarmed, assured me aloud that I had nothing to fear. ' The 
gentleman,' said he, ' is trying to act a part for which he is by no means 
qualified : if he had all the inclination in the world, it is not in his power 
to be mad ; his spirits are too flat to be kindled into phrenzy.' ' 'Tis no 
bad p-p-puif, how-owever,' observed a person in a tarnished laced coat : 
' aff-ffected m-madness w-ill p-pass for w-wit w-with nine-nineteen out of 
t-twenty.' 'And affected stuttering for humor,' replied our landlord; 
'though, God knows! there is no affinity between them.' It seems this 
wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain speaking, ha^ 
recourse to this defect, by means of which he frequently extorted the 
laugh of the company, without the least expense of genius ; and that im- 
perfection, which he had at first counterfeited, was now become so habit- 
ual, that he could not lay it aside. 

" A certain winking genius, who wore yellow gloves at dinner, had, 

on his first introduction, taken such offence at S .because he looked 

and talked, and ate and drank, like any other man, that he spoke contemp- 
tuously of his understanding ever after, and never would repeat his visit, 
until he had exhibited the following proof of his caprice. Wat Wyvi' '-- 
poet, having made some unsuccessful advances towards an intimac'j '.'^^ 

S , at last gave him to understand, by a third person, that he had 

written a poem in his praise, and a satire against his person : that if he 
would admit him to his house, the first should be immediately sent to press ; 
but that if he persisted in declining his friendship, he would publish the 
satire without delay. S replied, that he looked upon Wyvil's pane- 
gyric as, in effect, a species of infamy, an^l would resent it accordingly 
with a good cudgel ; but if he published the satire, he might deserve his 
compassion, and had nothing to fear from liis revenge. Wyvil liaving con- 
sidered tlie alternative, resolved to mortify S by printing the pane- 
gyric, for which he received a s(mnd drubbing. Then he swore the peace 
against the aggressor, who. in order to avoid a prosecution at law, admitted 

him to his good graces. It was the singularity in S 's conduct on this 

oocasion, tliat reconciled him to the yellow-gloved philosopher, who owned 
he had some genius ; and from that period cultivated his acquaintance. 

"Curious to know upon what subjects the several talents of my fellow- 
guests were employed, I applied to my commimicative friend Dick Ivy, 
who gave me to understand that most of them were, or liad been, under- 
strappers, or journeymen, to more creditable authors, for whom they trans- 
hitcd, collated, and compiled, in the business of bookmaking ; and that all 
of them had, at different times, labored in the service of our landlord, 
though they had now set up for themselves in various departnients of liter- 
ature. Not only their talents, but also their nations and dialects, were so 
various, tliHt our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. 
We had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged 
off 1)}' the most discordant vociferation ; for as they all spoke together, no 
man had any cliance to be heard, unless he could bawl louder than his 
fellows. It must be owned, however, there was nothing pedantic in their 
discourse ; they carefully avoided all learned disquisitions, and endeavored 
to be facetious : nor did their endeavors always niiscarry ; some droll rep- 
artee passed, and much laughter was excited ; and if any individual lost 
his temper so far as to transgress the bounds of decorum, he was effectually 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT,' AND FIELDING. 253 

We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias 
Smollett, the manly, kindly, honest, and irascible ; worn and 

checked by the master of the feast, who exerted a sort of paternal authority 

over this irritable tribe. i, u j u 

" The most learned philosopher of the whole collection, who had been 
expelled the university for atheism, has made great progress in a refutation 
of Lord Bolingbroke's metaphysical works, which is said to be equally in- 
jrenious and orthodox : but, in the meantime, he has been presented to the 
Srand iury as a public nuisance for having blasphemed in an ale-house on 
the Lord's-day. The Scotchman gives lectures on the pronunciation ot the 
English language, which he is now publishing by subscription. 

" The Irislmian is a political writer, and goes by the name of My Lord 
Potato. He wrote a pamphlet in vindication of a Minister, hoping his zeal 
would be rewarded with some place or pension; but finding himselt neg- 
lected in that quarter, he whispered about that the pamphlet was written 
bv the Minister himself, and he published an answer to his ovyn production. 
In this he addressed the author under the title of 'your lordship, vath such 
solemnity, that the public swallowed the deceit, and bought up the whole 
impression. The wise politicians of the metropolis declared they were both 
masterly performances, and chuckled over the flimsy reveries of an igno- 
rant garreteer, as the profound speculations of a veteran statesman, ac- 
"^ '-.ted with all the secrets of the cabinet. The imposture was detected 
b'"-' t'ne sequel, and our Hibernian pamphleteer retains no part of his assumed 
importance but the bare title of ' my lord/ and the upper part of the table at 
the potato-ordinary in Shoe Lane. 

''Opposite to me sat a Piedmontese, who had obhged the pubhc with a 
humorous satire, entitled ' The Balance of the English Poets ; a perform- 
ance which evinced the great modesty and taste of the author, and, m par- 
ticular, his intimacy with the elegancies of the English language. The 
sa^e, who labored under the aypocpofila, or, ' horror of green fields had just 
finished a treatise on practical agriculture, though, in fact, he had never 
seen corn growing in his life, and was so ignorant of grain, that our enter- 
tainer, in the face of the whole company, made him own that a plate ot 
hominy was the best rice-pudding he had ever eat. 

" The stutterer had almost finished his travels through Europe and part 
t.f Asia, without ever budging beyond the liberties of the King s Bench, 
except in term-time with a tipstaff for his companion : and as for little iim 
Cropdale the most facetious member of the whole society, he had happily 
n^ound up the catastrophe of a virgin tragedy, from the exhibition of winch 
he promised himself a large fund of profit and reputation. Tim liad made 
Bhift to live many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a 
volume- but that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors 
who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease, and 
spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all m the se- 
rene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only enchanted by their 
genius, but reformed by their morality. 

" After dinner, we adjourned into the garden, where I observed Mr. 

S give a short separate audience to every individual in a small remote 

filbert-walk, from whence most of them dropped off one after another, 
without further ceremony." 

Smollet's house was in Lawrence Lane, Chelsea, and is now destroyed. 
See Handbook of London, p. 115. 

" The person of Smollet was eminently handsome, his features prepos- 
gessing, and, by the joint testimony of all his surviving friends, his conver- 



254 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

battered, but still brave and full of heart, after a long struggle 
against a hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a 
hundred different schemes ; he had been reviewer and histo- 
rian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought 
endless literary battles ; and braved and wielded for 3^ears the 
cudgels of controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those 
da3's, and a niggard pay. He was oppressed b}^ illness, age, 
narrow fortune ; but his spirit was still resolute, and his courage 
steady ; the battle over, he could do justice to the enemy with 
whom he had been so fiercel}^ engaged, and give a not un- 
friendly grasp to the hand that had mauled him. He is like 
one of those Scotch cadets, of whom histor}' gives us so many 
examples, and whom, with a national fidelit}^ the great Scotch 
novelist has painted so charmingly. Of gentle birth ^ and nar- 
row means, going out from his northern home to win his fortune 

sation, in the highest degree, instructive and amusing. Of his disposition, 
those who have read his works, (and wlio has not?) may form a very 
accurate estimate ; for in each of tliem he has presented, and sometimes, 
under various points of view, the leading features of his own character 

without disguising the most unfavorable of them When unse- 

duced by his satirical propensities, he was kind, generous, and humane to 
others ; bold, upright, and independent in his own character ; stooped to 
no patron, sued for no favor, but honestly and honorably maintained him- 
self on his literary labors. . . . He was a doating father, and an affection- 
ate husband ; and the warm zeal with which his memory was cherished 
by his surviving friends showed clearly the reliance which they placed 
upon his regard." — Sir Walter Scott. 

* Smollett of Bonhill, in Dumbartonshire. Arms, azure, a bend, or, 
between a lion rampant, ppr., holding in his paw a banner, argent, and a 
bugle-horn, also ppr. Crest, an oak-tree, ppr. Motio, Viresco. 

Smollett's father, Archibald, was the fourth son of Sir James Smollett 
of Bonhill, a Scotch Judge and Member of Parliament, and one of the 
commissioners for framing the Union with England. Archibald married, 
without the old gentleman's consent, and died early, leaving his children 
dependent on their grandfather. Tobias, the second son, was born in 1721, 
in the old house of Dalquharn in the valley of Leven ; and all his life loved 
and admired that valley and Loch Lomond beyond all the valleys and 
lakes in Europe. He learned the " rudiments " at Dumbarton Grammar 
School, and studied at Glasgow. 

But when he was only ten, his grandfather died, and left him without 
provision (figuring as the old judge in " Roderick Random " in consequence, 
according to Sir Walter). Tobias, armed with the " Regicide, a Tragedy" 
— a provision precisely similar to that with which Dr. Johnson had started, 
just before — came up to London. The "Regicide" came to no good, 
though at first patronized by Lord Lyttelton ("one of those little fellows 
who are sometimes called great men," Smollett says); and Smollett embarked 
as "surgeon's mate" on board a line-of-battle ship, and served in the Car- 
thagena expedition, in 1741. He left the service in the West Indies, and 
after residing some time in Jamaica, returned to England in 1746. 

He was now unsuccessful as a physician, to begin with ; published the 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 255 

in the world, and to fight his wa}^, armed with courage, hunger, 
and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oali-tree, with green 
leaves yet springing from it. On his ancient coat-of-arms 
there is a lion and a horn ; this shield of his was battered and 
dinted in a hundred fights and brawls,* through which the stout 

satires, "Advice" and "Reproof" without any luck; and (1747) married 
the " beautiful and accomplished Miss Lascelles." 

In 1748 he brought out his " Roderick Random," which at once made a 
" hit." The subsequent events of his life may be presented, chronologically, 
in a bird's-eye view : — 

1750. Made a tour to Paris, where he chiefly wrote "Peregrine Pickle." 

1751. Published " Peregrine Pickle." 

1753. Published " Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom." 

1755. Published version of " Don Quixote." 

1756. Began the " Critical Review." 

1758. Published his " History of England." 

1763-1766. Travelling in France and Italy; published his "Travels." 

1769. Published " Adventures of an Atom." 

1770. Set out for Italy ; died at Leghorn 21st of Oct., 1771, in the fifty- 
first year of his age. 

* A good specimen of the old " slashing " style of writing is presented 
by the paragraph on Admiral Knowles, which subjected Smollett to prose- 
cution and imprisonment. The admiral's defence on the occasion of the 
failure of the Rochfort expedition came to be examined before the tribunal 
of the " Critical Review." 

" He is," said our author, " an admiral without conduct, an engineer 
without knowledge, an offiqer without resolution, and a man without 
veracity ! " 

Three months' imprisonment in the King's Bench avenged this stinging 
paragraph. v 

But the " Critical " was to SmoUet a perpetual fountain of " hot water." 
Among less important controversies may be mentioned that with Grainger, 
the translator of " Tibullus." Grainger replied in a pamphlet; and in the 
next number of the " Review " we find him threatened with " castigation," 
as an " owl that has broken from his mew ! " 

In Dr. Moore's biography of him is a pleasant anecdote. After pub' 
lishing the " Don Quixote," he returned to Scotland to pay a visit to his 
mother : — 

" On Smollett's arrival, he was introduced to his mother with the con- 
nivance of Mrs. Telfer (her daughter), as a gentleman from the West 
Indies, who was intimately acquainted with her son. The better to sup- 
port his assumed character, he endeavored to preserve a serious counte- 
nance, approaching to a frown ; but while his mother's eyes were riveted 
on his countenance, he could not refrain from smiling : she immediately 
sprung from her chair, and throwing her arms round his neck, exclauned, 
' Ah, my son ! my son ! I have found you at last! ' 

'' She afterwards told him, that if he had kept his austere looks and 
continued to gloom, he might have escaped detection some time longer, but 
* your old roguish smile,' added she, ' betrayed you at once.' 

" Shortly after the publication of ' The Adventures of an Atom,' disease 
again attacked Smollett with redoubled violence. Attempts being vainly 
made to obtain for him the office of Consul in some part of the Mediterra- 
nean, he was compelled to seek a warmer climate, without better means of 



256 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

Scotchman bore it courageously. You see somehow that he is a 
gentleman, through all his battling and struggling, his povert}^ 
his hard-fought successes, and his defeats. His novels are 
recollections of his own adventures ; his characters drawn, as I 
should think, from personages with whom he became acquainted 
in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have 
had ; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow College — 
in the country apothecary'^ shop ; in the gun-room of the mau- 
of-war where he served as surgeon ; and in the hard life on 
shore, where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He 
did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive 
faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and 
delightful broad humor. I think Uncle Bowhng, in '^ Roderick 
Random," is as good a character as Squire Western himself: 
and Mr. Morgan, the Welsh apothecary, is as pleasant as Dr. 
Caius. What man who has made his inestimable acquaint- 
ance — what novel-reader who loves Don Quixote and Major 
Dalgetty — will refuse his most cordial acknowledgments to the 
admirable Lieutenant Lismahago. The novel of "Humphrey 
Clinker" is, I do think, the most laughable story that has 
ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began. 
Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Englishmen 
on the grin for ages yet to come ; and in their letters and the 
story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of sparkling 
laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud's well. 

Fielding, too, has described, though with a greater hand, 
the characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had 
more than ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with 
life. His family and education, first — his fortunes and mis- 
fortunes afterwards, brought him into the society of every rank 
and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books : he 
is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth ; less wild, I am 
glad to think, than his predecessor : at least heartily conscious 
of demerit, and anxious to amend. 

When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recol- 
lection of the great wits was still fresh in the cofiee-houses and 

provision than his own precarious finances could afford. The kindness of 
his distinguished friend and countryman, Dr. Armstrong (then abroad), 
procured for Dr. and Mrs. Smollett a house at Monte Nero, a village situ- 
ated on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea, in the neighborhood of 
Leghorn, a romantic and salutary abode, where he prepared for the press, 
the last, and like music ' sweetest in the close,' the most pleasing of his 
compositions, ' The Expedition of Humphrey CUnker.' This delightful 
work w^s published in 1771." — Sir Walter Scott. 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 257 

assembli9s, and the judges there declared that young Harry 
Fielding had more spirits and wit than Congreve or any of his 
brilliant successors. His figure was tall and stalwart ; his face 
handsome, manl}', and noble-looking ; to the very last da3's of 
his life he retained a grandeur of air, and, although worn down 
by disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon the 
people round about him. 

A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the captain* 
of the ship in which he was making his last voyage, and Fielding 
relates how the man finall}' went down on his knees and begged 
his passenger's pardon. He was living up to the last daj's of his 
life, and his spirit never gave in. His vital power must have 
been immensely strong. Lady Mar}^ Wortley Montagu f prettil}^ 
characterizes Fielding and this capacity for happiness which he 
possessed, in a little notice of his death, when she compares 
him to Steele, who was as improvident and as happy as he was, 
and says that both should have gone on living for ever. One 
can fancy the eagerness and gusto with which a man of Field- 

* The dispute with the captain arose from the wish of that functionary 
to intrude on his right to his cabin, for which he had paid thirty pounds. 
After recounting the circumstances of the apology, he characteristically 
adds : — 

" And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own 
praises, I do utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. Neither did the 
greatness of my mind dictate, nor the force of my Christianity exact this 
forgiveness. To speak truth, I forgave him from a motive which would 
make men much more forgiving, if they were much wiser than they are: 
because it was convenient for me so to do." 

t Lady Mary was his second-cousin — their respective grandfathers 
being sons of George Fielding, Earl of Desmond, son of William, Earl of 
Denbigh, 

In a letter dated just a week before his death, she says — 

" H. Fielding has given a true picture of liimself and his first wife in 
the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure 
excepted ; and I am persuaded, several of the incidents lie mentions are 
real matters of fact. I wonder he does not perceive Tom Jones and Mr. 

Booth are sorry scoundrels Fielding has really a fund of true humor, 

and was to be pitied at his first entrance into the world, having no choice, 
as iie said himself, but to be a hackney writer or a liackney coachman. His 
genius deserved a better fate; but I cannot help blaming that continued in- 
discretion, to give it the softest name, that has run through his life, and I am 
afraid still remains Since I was born no original has appeared except- 
ing Congreve, and Fielding, who would, I believe, have approached nearer 
to his excellences, if not forced by his necessities to publish without correc- 
tion, nnd throw many productions into the world he would have thrown into 
the fire, if meat could have been got without money, or money without 

scribbling I am sorry not to see any more of Peregrine Pickle's 

performances; I wisii you would tell me his name." — Letters and Works 
(Lord Wharncliffe's Ed.), vol. iii. pp. 93, 94. 

17 



258 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

ing's frame, with his vast liealth and robust appetite, his ardent 
spirits, his J03'ful humor, and his keen and hearty relish for life, 
must have seized and drunk that cup of pleasure which the town 
offered to him. Can an}^ of my hearers remember the youthful 
feats of a college breakfast — the meats devoured and the cups 
quaffed in that Homeric feast? I can call to mind some of the 
heroes of those 3'outhful banquets, and fanc}^ 3^oung Fielding 
from Le3'den rushing upon the feast, with his- great laugh and 
immense healthy young appetite, eager and vigorous to enjo3^ 
The 3^oung man's wit and manners made him friends ever3^-> 
where : he lived with the grand Man's societ3' of those da3's ; 
he was courted b3^ peers and men of wealth and fashion. As 
he had a paternal allowance from his father. General Fielding, 
which, to use Henr3''s own phrase, an3' man might pa3' who 
would ; as he liked good wine, good clothes, and good company, 
which are all expensive articles to purchase, Hany Fielding 
began to run into debt, and borrow money in that easy manner 
in which Captain Booth borrows mone3^ in the novel ; was in 
nowise particular in accepting a few pieces from the purses of 
his rich friends, and bore down upon more than one of them, 
as Walpole tells us onl3' too truly, for a dinner or a guinea. 
To supply himself with the latter, he began to write theatrical 
pieces, having alread3^, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance 
amongst the Old fields and Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He 
laughed at these pieces and scorned them. When the audience 
upon one occasion began to hiss a scene which he was too lazy 
to correct, and regarding which, when Garrick remonstrated 
with him, he said that the public was too stupid to find out the 
badness of his work : when the audience began to hiss. Fielding 
said, with characteristic coolness — " The3' have found it out, 
have they?" He did not prepare his novels in this wa3', and 
with a very different care and interest laid the foundations and 
built up the edifices of his future fame. 

Time and shower have ver3^ little damaged those. The 
fashion and ornaments are, perhaps, of the architecture of that 
age ; but the buildings remain strong and loft3^, and of admira- 
ble proportions — masterpieces of genius and monuments of 
workmanlike skill. 

I cannot oflf'er or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. 
Why hide his faults ? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud 
of periphrases ? Why not show him,. like him as he is, not 
robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in an heroic 
attitude, but with inked ruflfles, and claret-stains on his tar- 
nished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good- 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AKD FIELDING. 259 

fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained 
as 3'ou see him, and worn b}^ care and dissipation, that man re- 
tains some of the most precious and splendid human qualities 
and endowments. He has an admirable natural love of truth, 
the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest 
satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully 
wise and detective ; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a 
rascal like a policeman's lantern. He is one of the manliest and 
kindliest of human beings : in the midst of all his imperfections, 
he respects female innocence and infantine tenderness, as you 
would suppose such a great-hearted, courageous soul would re- 
spect and care for them. He could not be so brave, generous, 
truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and 
tender. He will give any man his purse — he can't help kind- 
ness and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean 
mind; he, admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, 
stoops to no flattery, bears no rancor, disdains all disloyal arts, 
does his public duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, 
and dies at his work.* 

If that theory be — and I have no doubt it is — the right 
and safe one, that human nature is always pleased with the 
spectacle ofinnocence rescued by fidelit}-, purit}^ and courage ; 
I suppose that of the heroes of Fielding's three novels, we should 
like honest Joseph Andrews the best, and Captain Booth the 
second, and Tom Jones the third. f 

Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby's cast-off 
livery, is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his 
fustian-suit, or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like 
those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders, a high courage, and 
a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph's bravery and 
good qualities ; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs ; 
his braver}^ in riding races for the gentlemen of the county, and 
his constanc}" in refusing bribes <«nd temptation, have some- 
thing affecting in their naivete and freshness, and prepossess 

* He sailed for Lisbon, from Gravesend, on Sunday morning, June 
30th, 1754 ; and began " The Journal of a Voyage " during the passage. 
He died at Lisbon, in the beginning of October of the same year. He lies 
buried there, in the English Protestant churchyard, near the Estrella 
Church, with this inscription over him : — 

"henricus fielding. 

luget britannia gremio non datum 

fovere natdm." 

t Fielding himself is said by Dr. Warton to have preferred " Joseph 
Andrews " to his other writings. 



260 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

one in favor of that handsome young hero. The rustic bloom 
of Fann}^ and the dehghtful simplicity of Parson Adams are 
described with a friendliness which wins the reader of their 
story ; we part from them with more regret than from Booth 
and Jones. 

Fielding, no doubt, began to write this novel in ridicule of 
" Pamela," for which work one can understand the heart}^ con- 
tempt and antipath}^ which such an athletic and boisterous 
genius as Fielding's must have entertained. He couldn't do 
otherwise than laugh at the punj' cockney bookseller, pouring 
out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold liim up 
to scorn as a mollcoddle and a milksop. His genius had been 
nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. His muse had 
sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight 
streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls, and reeled home 
to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman. Richardson's 
goddess was attended by old maids and dowagers, and fed 
on muffins and bohea. "Milksop!" roars Harry Fielding, 
clattering at the timid shop-shutters. " Wretch f Monster! 
Mohock!" shrieks the sentimental author of "Pamela;" * 
and all the ladies of his court cackle out an affrighted chorus. 
Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the author, 
whom he disliked and utterly scorned and laughed at ; but he 
is himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he be- 
gins to like the characters which he invents, can't help making 
them manly and pleasant as well as ridiculous, and before he 
has done with them all, loves them heartily every one. 

Richardson's sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite 
as natural as the other's laughter and contempt at the senti- 
mentalist. I have not learned that these likings and dislikings 
have ceased in the present day : and every author must lay his 
account not only to misrepresentation, but to honest enmity 
among critics, and to being j^ted and abused for good as well 
as for bad reasons. Richardson disliked Fielding's works quite 
honestly : Walpole quite honestly spoke of them as vulgar and 
stupid. Their squeamish stomachs sickened at the rough fare 

* "Richardson," says worthy Mrs. Barbauld, in her Memoir of him, 
prefixed to his Correspondence, "was exceedingly hurt at this ('Joseph 
Andrews '), the more so as they had been on good terms, and he was very 
intimate with Fielding's two sisters. He never appears cordially to have 
forgiven it (perhaps it was not in human nature he should), and he always 
speaks in his letters with a great deal of asperity of ' Tom Jones,' more 
indeed than was quite graceful in a rival author. No doubt he himself 
thought his indignation was solelv excited bv the loose morality of the 
work and of its author, but he could tolerate Gibber." 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 261 

and the rough guests assembled at Fielding's jolly revel. In- 
deed the cloth might have been cleaner : and the dinner and the 
company were scarce such as suited a dandy. The kind and wise 
old Johnson would not sit down with him.* But a greater 
scholar than Johnson could afford to admire that astonishing 
genius of Harry Fielding : and we all know the lofty panegyric 
which Gibbon wrote of him, and which remains a towering monu- 
ment to the great novelist's memory. ' ' Our hnmortal Fielding," 
Gibbon writes, " was of the younger branch of the Earls of Den- 
bio-h, who drew their origin iTom the Counts of Hapsburgh. 
The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of Eng- 
land : but the romance of ' Tom Jones,' that exquisite picture of 
humor and manners, will outlive the palace of the P^scurial and 
the Imperial Eagle of Austria." 

There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. 
To have your name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it 
written on the dome of St. Peter's. Pilgrims from all the 
world admire and behold it. 

As a picture of manners, the novel of "Tom Jones" is 
indeed exquisite: as a work of construction quite a wonder: 
the by-play of wisdom ; the power of observation ; the multi- 
plied felicitous turns and thoughts ; the varied character of the 
great Comic Epic : keep the reader in a perpetual admiration 
and curiosity.t But c^gainst Mr. Thomas Jones himself we 
have a right to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem 
the author evidently has for that character. Charles Lamb 

* It must always be borne in mind, that besides that the Doctor couldn't 
be expected to like Fieldmg's wild life (to say nothmg of the fact that they 
were of opposite sides in politics), Richardson was one of his earliest and 
kindest friends. Yet Jolinson too (as Boswell tells us) read Ameha 
through without stopping. . , .^, 

t "Manners change from generation to generation and with manners 
morals appear to change -actually change with some, but appear to 
change with all but the abandoned. A young man of the present_day who 
should act as Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston 
&c. would not be a Tom Jones ; and a Tom Jones of the present day without 
perhaps being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than 
submit to be kept by a harridan of fortune. Therefore, his novel is and in- 
deed pretends to be, no example of conduct. But, notwithstandmg all this, I 
do loathe the cant which can recommend ' Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe 
as strictly moral, although they poison the imagination of the young with 
continued doses of tinct. b/f.tce, while Tom Jones is prolnbited as loose. 1 do 
not speak of young women ; but a young man whose heart or feelings can 
be injured, or even his passions excited by this novel, is already thoroughly 
corrupt. There is a cheerful, sunshiny, breezy spirit, that prevails every- 
where, strongly contrasted with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity ot 
Richardson." — Golbripge. Literary Remains, vol. ii- p. 374, 



262 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

saj's finel3^ of Jones, that a single hearty laugh from him " clears 
the air" — but then it is in a certain state of the atmosphere. 
It might clear the air when such personages as Blifil or Jjady 
Bellaston poison it. But I fear very much that (except until 
the very last scene of the story) , when Mr. Jones enters Sophia's 
drawing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted with the 
3'Oung gentleman's tobacco-pipe and punch. I can't say that 
I think Mr. Jones a virtuous character ; I can't say but that I 
think Fielding's evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones 
shows that the great humorist's moral sense was blunted bj'- his 
life, and that here, in Art and Ethics, there is a great error. 
If it is right to have a hero whom we may admire, let us at 
least take care that he is admirable : if, as is the plan of some 
authors (a plan decidedl}' against their interests, be it said), it 
is propounded that there exists in life no such being, and there- 
fore that in novels, the picture of life, there should appear no 
such character ; then Mr. Thomas Jones becomes an admissible 
person, and we examine his defects and good qualities, as we 
do those of Parson Thwackum, or Miss Seagrim. But a hero 
with a flawed reputation ; a hero spunging for a guinea ; a hero 
who can't pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his honor out 
to hire, is absurd, and his claim to heroic rank untenable. I 
protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding such rank at all. 
I protest even against his being considered a more than ordi- 
nary 3'oung fellow, rudd3'-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond 
of wine and pleasure. He would not rob a church, but that is 
all ; and a prett3' long argument ma3^ be debated, as to which 
of these old types, the spendthrift, the h3^pocrite, Jones and 
Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface, — is the worst member of 
society and the most, deserving of censure. The prodigal Cap- 
tain Booth is a better man than his predecessor Mr. Jones, in 
so far as he thinks much more humbl3' of himself than Jones 
did : goes down on his knees, and owns his weaknesses, and 
cries out, " Not for m3^ sake, but for the sake of my pure and 
sweet and beautiful wife Amelia, I pra3' 3'ou, O critical reader, 
to forgive me." That stern moralist regards him from the 
bench (the judge's practice out of court is not here the question), 
and says, " Captain Booth, it is perfectly true that your life 
has been disreputable, and that on man3^ occasions 3^ou have 
shown 3^ourself to be no better than a scamp — 3'ou have been 
tippling at the tavern, when the kindest and sweetest lad3' i^ 
the world has cooked your little supper of boiled mutton and 
awaited you all the night ; 3'ou have spoilt the little dish of 
boiled mutton thereby, and caused pangs and pains to AmeUa's 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 263 

tender heart.* You have got into debt without the means of 
paj'ing it. You have gambled the money with which 3-ou 
ought to have paid your rent. You have spent in drink or in 
worse amusements the sums which your poor wife has raised 
upon her little home treasures, her own ornaments, and the 
toys of her children. But, 3'ou rascal ! you own humbl}^ that 
you are no better than you should be ; you never for one 
moment pretend that you are anything but a miserable weak- 
minded rogue. You do in 3^our heart adore that angelic woman, 
your wife, and for her sake, sirrah, you shall have your dis- 
charge. Lucky for j^ou and for others like you, that in spite 
of your failings and imperfections, pure hearts pity and love 
3'ou. For 3'Our wife's sake you are permitted to go hence with- 
out a remand ; and I beg 3^ou, by the wa3^, to carry to that 
angelical lad3" the expression of the cordial respect and admi- 
ration of this court." Amelia pleads for her husband. Will 
Booth : Amelia pleads for her reckless kindlv old father, Harry 
Fielding. To have invented that character, is not onl3' a 
triumph of art, but it is a good action. They say it was in his 
own home that Fielding knew her and loved her : and from his 
own wife that he drew the most charming character in English 



* " Nor was she (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) a stranger to that be- 
loved first wife, whose picture he drew in his * Amelia,' when, as slie said, 
even the glowing language he knew how to employ, did not do more than 
justice to the amiable qualities of the original, or to her beauty, although 
this had suffered a little from the accident related in the novel — a frightful 
overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her nose. He loved her passion- 
ately, and she returned his affection 

" His biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that, after the 
death of this charming woman, he married her maid. And yet the act was 
not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few 
personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her 
mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his 
own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found no relief but from weeping 
along with her ; nor solace when a degree calmer, but in talking to her of 
the angel they mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confidential 
associate, and in process of time he began to think he could not give liis 
children a tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful house- 
keeper and nurse. At least, this was what he told his friends ; and it is 
certain that her conduct as his wife confirmed it, and fully justified his 
good opinion." — Letters and Works of Lady Mary Woriley Montagu. Edited 
by Lord Wharncliffe. Lntroductory Anecdotes, vol. \. pp. 80, 81. 

Fielding's first wife was Miss Craddock, a young lady from Salisbury, 
with a fortune of 1,500/., whom he married in 1736, About the same time 
he succeeded, himself, to an estate of 200/. per annum, and on the joint 
amount he lived for some time as a splendid country gentleman in Dorset- 
shire. Three years brought him to the end of his fortune; when he re- 
turned to London, and became a student of law. 



264 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

fiction. Fiction! why fiction? why not history? I know 
Amelia just as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I be- 
lieve in Colonel Bath almost as much as in Colonel Gardiner 
or the Duke of Cumberland. I admire the author of " Amelia," 
and thank the kind master who introduced me to that sweet 
and delightful companion and friend. "Amelia" perhaps is 
not a better story than "Tom Jones," but it has the better 
ethics ; the prodigal repents at least, before forgiveness, — 
whereas that odious broad-backed Mr. Jones carries off his 
beauty with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold errors 
and shortcomings ; and is not half punished enough before the 
great prize of fortune and love falls to his share. I am angry 
with Jones. Too much of the plum-cake and rewards of life 
fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia 
actually surrenders without a proper sense of decorum ; the 
fond, foolish, palpitating little creature! — "Indeed, Mr. 
Jones," she says, — "it rests with you to appoint the da3^" 
I suppose Sophia is drawn from life as well as Amelia ; and 
many a young fellow, no better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has 
carried by a coup de main the heart of many a kind gu'l who 
was a great deal too good for him. 

What a wonderful art ! What an admirable gift of nature 
was it b}^ which the author of these tales was endowed, and 
which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, 
to seize upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people — 
speculate gravely upon their faults or their excellences, prefer 
this one or that, deplore Jones's fondness for drink and play, 
Booth's fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate posi- 
tion of the wives of both gentlemen — love and admire those 
ladies with all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as 
if we had breakfasted with them this morning in their actual 
drawing-rooms, or should meet them this afternoon in the 
Park ! What a genius ! what a vigor ! what a bright-eyed 
intelligence and observation ! what a wholesome hatred for 
meanness and knavery ! what a vast sympathy ! what a cheer- 
fulness ! what a manly relish of life ! what a love of human 
kind ! what a poet is here ! — watching, meditating, brooding, 
creating ! What multitudes of truths has that man left behind 
him ! What generations he 'has taught to laugh wisel}' and 
fairly ! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the 
exercise of thoughtful humor and the manly play of wit ! What 
a courasje he had ! What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness 
of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the 
storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck ! It \% 



HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 265 

wonderful to think of the pains and miser}- which the man 
suffered ; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he en- 
dured ; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melan- 
choly, his view of truth never warped, and his generous human 
kindness never smTcndered.* 

* " In the" Gentleman's Magazine for 1786, an anecdote is related of 
Harry Fielding, "in whom," says the correspondent, "good-nature and 
philanthropy in their extreme degree were known to be the prominent 
features." It seems that " some parochial taxes " for his house in Beau- 
fort Buildings had long been demanded by the collector. " At last, Harry 
went off to Johnson, and obtained by a process of literary mortgage the 
needful sum. He was returning with it, when he met an old college chum 
whom he had not seen for many years. He asked tlie chum to dinner with 
him at a neighboring tavern ; and learning that he was in difficulties, emp- 
•tied the contents of his pocket into his. On returning home he was in- 
formed that the collector had been twice for the money. ' Friendship has 
called for the money and had it,' said Fielding ; ' let the collector call 
again.' " 

It is elsewhere told of him, that being in company with the Earl of 
Denbigh, his kinsman, and the convei'sation turning upon their relation- 
ship, the Earl asked him how it was that he spelled his name " Fielding," 
and not " Feilding," like the head of the house ? "I cannot tell, my lord," 
said he, " except it be that my branch of the family were the first that 
knew how to spell." 

In 1748, he was made Justice of the Peace for Westminster and Middle- 
sex, an office then paid by fees, and ver}'^ laborious, without being particu- 
larly reputable. It may be seen from his own words, in the Introduction 
to the " Voyage," what kind of work devolved upon him, and in what a 
state he was, during these last years ; and still more clearly, how he com- 
ported himself through all. 

"Whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost 
fatigued to death with several long examinations, relating to five different 
murders, all committed within the space of a week, by different gangs of 
street-robbers, I received a message from his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, 
by Mr. Carrington.the King's messenger, to attend his Grace the next 
morning in Lincoln's Inn Fields, upon some business of importance : but I 
excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides being lame, 
I was very ill with the great fatigues I had lately undergone, added to my 
distemper. 

"His -Grace, however, sent Mr. Carrington the very next morning, with 
another summons ; with which, though in the utmost distress, I immedi- 
ately complied ; but the Duke happening, unfortunately for me, to be then 
particularly engaged, after I had waited some time, sent a gentleman to 
discourse with me on the best plan which could be invented for these 
murders and robberies, which were every day committed in the streets ; 
upon which I promised to transmit nfy opinion in writing to his Grace, 
who, as the gentleman informed me, intended to lay it before the Privy 
Council. 

" Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set myself 
down to work, and in about four days sent the Duke as regular a plan as 
I could form, with all the reasons and arguments I could bring to support 
it, dravwi out on several sheets of paper ; and soon received a mes- 
sage from the Duke, by Mr. Carrington, acquainting me that my plan 



266 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Field- 
ing's last voyage to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the 
ship fell down on his knees and asked the sick man's pardon 
— "I did not suffer," Fielding says, in his hearty, manl}- way, 
his e3'es lighting up as it were with their old fire — " I did not 
suffer a brave man and an old man to regiain a moment in that 
posture, but immediately forgave him." Indeed, I think, with 
his noble spirit and unconquerable generosit}-. Fielding reminds 
one of those brave men of whom one reads in stories of English 
shipwrecks and disasters — of the officer on the African shore, 
when disease has destroj'ed the crew, and he himself is seized 
by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken hand, 
takes the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off 
the dangerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavor — of thq 
wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who never loses 
his heart, who eyes the danger steadily, and has a cheer}^ word 
for all, until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gal- 
lant ship goes down. Such a brave and- gentle heart, such an 
intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the manly, 
the English Harrj' Fielding. 

was highly approved of, and that all the terras of it would be complied 
with. 

" The principal and most material of these terms was the immediately 
depositing 600/. in my Iiands ; at which small charge I undertook to de- 
molish the then reigning gangs, and to put the civil policy into such order, 
that no such gangs should ever be able for the future to form themselves 
into bodies, or at least to remain any time formidable to the public. 

" I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the re- 
peated advice of my physical acquaintances and the ardent desire of my 
warmest friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice; 
in which case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be almost infal- 
lible. But I had the most eager desire to demolish this gang of villains 
and cut-tliroats 

" After some weeks the money was paid at the Treasury, and within a 
few days after 200/. of it had come into my hands, the whole gang of cut- 
throats was entirely dispersed " 

Further on, he says — 

" I will confess that my private affairs at the beginning of the winter 
had but a gloomy aspect ; for I had not plundered the public or the poor of 
those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder both as much as 
they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking; on the contrary, by 
composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars (which 
I blush when I say hath not been universally practised), and by refusing 
to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had 
another left, I had reduced an income of about 600/. a year of the dirtiest 
money upon earth, to little more than 300/., a considerable portion of which 
remained with my clerk." 



STEENE AND GOLDSMITH. 



Roger Sterne, Sterne's father, was the second son of a 
numerous race, descendants of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of 
York, in the reign of James II. ; and children of Simon Sterne 
and Mary Jaques, his wife, heiress of Elvington, near York.* 
Roger was a lieutenant in Handyside's regiment, and engaged 
in Flanders in Queen Anne's wars. He married the daughter 
of a noted sutler — " N. B., he was in debt to him," his son 
writes, pursuing the paternal biography — and marched through 
the world with this companion ; she following the regiment and 
bringing man}^ children to poor Roger Sterne. The captain 
was an irascible but kind and simple little man, Sterne says, 
and informs us that his sire was run through the body at Gib- 
raltar, by a brother officer, in a duel which arose out of a dis- 
pute about a goose. Roger never entirelj^ recovered from the 
effects of this rencontre, but died presently at Jamaica, whither 
he had followed the drum. 

Laurence, his second child, was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, 
in 1713, and travelled, for the first ten 3- ears of his life, on his 
father's march, from barrack to transport, from Ireland to 
England, t 

One relative of his mother's took her and her family under 

* He came of a Suffolk family — one of whom settled in Nottingham- 
shire. The famous " starling " was actually the family crest. 

t "It was in this parish (of Animo, in Wicklow), during our stay, tliat 
I had that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race, whilst the mill 
was going, and of being taken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but 
known for truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common 
people flocked to see me." — Sterne. 



268 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

shelter for ten months at Mullingar : another collateral descend- 
ant of the Archbishop's lioused them for a 3'ear at his castle 
near Carrickfergiis. Lany Sterne was put to school at Halifax 
in England, finall}' was adopted b}' his kinsman of Elvington, 
and parted company with his father, the Captain, who marched 
on his path of life till he met the fatal goose, which closed his 
career. The most picturesque and delightful parts of Laurence 
Sterne's writings, we owe to his recollections of the military 
life. Trim's montero cap, and Le Fevre's sword, and dear 
Uncle Toby's roquelaure, are doubtless reminiscences of the 
bo}^, who had lived with the followers of William and Marl- 
borough, and had beat time with his little feet to the fifes of 
Ramillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn flags 
and halberds of Malplaquet on the parade-ground at Clonmel. 

Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen 
years old. His wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the 
respect of his master here ; for when the usher whipped Lau- 
rence for writing his name on the newl}' whitewashed school- 
room ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the understrapper, 
and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne was 
a boy of genius, and would come to preferment. 

His cousin, the Squire of Elvington, sent Sterne to Jesus 
College, Cambridge, where he remained five 3'ears, and taking 
orders, got, through his uncle's interest, the living of Sutton 
and the prebendary of York. Through his wife's connections, 
he got the living of Stillington. He married her in 1741 ; hav- 
ing ardently courted the young ladj^ for some years previously. 
It was not until the 3'oung lady fancied herself dying, that she 
made^ Sterne acquainted with the extent of her liking for him. 
One evening when he was sitting with her, with an almost 
broken heart to see her so ill (the Rev. Mr. Sterne's heart was 
a good deal broken in the course of his life), she said— '• M}^ 
dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I verily believe I have 
not long to live ; but I have left 3^ou every shilling of my for- 
tune : " a generositj- which overpowered Sterne. She recov- 
ered : and so they were married, and grew heartilv tired of 
each other before many years were over. " Xescio quid est 
materia cum me," Sterne writes to one of his friends (in dog- 
Latin, and very sad dog-Latin too); " sed sum fatigatus et 
aegrotus de mea uxore plus quam unquam : " which means, I 
am sorry to say, " I don't know what is the matter with me; 
but I am more tired and sick of my wife than ever." * 

* " My wife returns to Toulouse, and proposes to pass the summer at 
Bigna^res. I, on the contrary, go and visit my wife, the church, in York- 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 269 

This to be sure was five-and-twenty j^ears after Laurey had 
been overcome byi'^er generosity and she by Laurey's love. 
Then he wrote to hor of the delights of marriage, saying, " We 
will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Para- 
dise, before the arch-fiend entered that indescribable scene. 
The kindest affections will have room to expand in our retire- 
ment : let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, 
the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen 
a polyanthus blow in December? — Some friendly wall has 
sheltered it from the biting wind. No planetarj' influence shall 
reach us, but that which presides and cherishes the sweetest 
flowers. The gloomy family of care and distrust shall be ban- 
ished from our dwelling, guarded by thy kind and tutelar deity. 
We will sing our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice to the 
end of our pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one who 
languishes for thy society ! — As I take up my pen, my poor 
pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears are trickling 
down on my paper as I trace the word L." 

And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault 
but that she bores him, that our philanthropist writes, " Sum 
fatigatus et segrotus " — Sum mortaliter in amove with somebody 
else ! That fine flower of love, that poljanthus over which 
Sterne snivelled so many tears, could not last for a quarter of 
a century ! 

Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with 
such a fountain at command should keep it to arroser one 
homely old lad}' , when a score of 3"ounger and prettier people 
might be refreshed from the same gushing source.* It was in 

shire. We all live the longer, at least the happier, for having things our 
own way; this is my conjugal maxim. I own 'tis not the best of maxims, 
but I maintain 'tis not the worst." — Sterne's Letters : 20th January, 1764. 

* In a collection of " Seven Letters by Sterne and his Friends " (printed 
for private circulation in 1844), is a letter of M. ToUot, who was in France 
with Sterne and his family in 1764. Here is a paragraph : — 

"Nous arrivames le lendemain a Montpellier, ou nous trouvames notre 
ami Mr. Sterne, sa femme, sa fille, Mr. Huet, et quelques autres Anglaises. 
J'eus, je vous I'avoue, beaucoup de plai^ir en revoyant le bon et agreable 

Tristram II avait ete' assez longtemps k Toulouse, ou il se serait 

amuse sans sa femme, qui le poursuivit partout, et qui voulait etre de tout. 
Ces dispositions dans cette bonne dame lui out fait passer d'assez mauvais 
momens ; il supporte tous ces desagremens avec une patience d'ange." 

About four months after tliis very characteristic letter, Sterne wrote to 
the same gentleman to whom Tollot had written ; and from his letter we 
may extract a companion paragraph : — 

" . . . . AH which being premised, I have been for eight weeks 
srnitten with the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent. I 
wish, dear cousin, thou could'st conceive (perhaps thou canst without my 



270 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

December, 1767, that the Rev. Laurence Sterne, the famous 
Shandean, the charming Yorick, the delight of the fashionable 
world, the delicious divine, for whose sermons the whole polite 
world was subscribing,* the occupier of Rabelais's eas}' chair, 
onl3^ fresh stuffed and more elegant than when in possession 
of the cynical old curate of Meudon,t — the more than rival of 

wishing it) how dehciously I cantered away with it the first month, two up, 
two down, always upon my handles, along the streets from my hotel to hers, 
at first once — then twice, then three times a day, till at length I was with- 
in an ace of setting up my hobby-horse in her stable for good and all. I 
might as well, considering liow the enemies of the Lord have blasphemed 
thereupon. The last three weeks we were every hour upon the doleful 
ditty of parting ; and thou may'st conceive, dear cousin, how it altered my 
gait and air : for T went and came like any louden'd carl, and did nothing 
hui jouer des sentimeiis with her from sun-rising even to the setting of the 
same ; and now she is gone to the south of France ; and to finish the 
come'die, I fell ill, and broke a vessel in my lungs, and half bled to death. 
Voila mon histoire ! " 

Whether husband or wife had most of the "patience d'ange " may be un- 
certain ; but there can be no doubt which needed it most ! 

* " ' Tristram Shandy ' is still a greater object of admiration, the man 
as well as the book : one is invited to dinner, where he dines, a fortnight 
before. As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them 
and humor sometimes hit and sometimes missed. Have you read his 
' Sermons,' with his own comick figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the 
head of them ? They are in the style I think most proper for the pulpit, 
and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart ; but you see him often 
tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the 
face of the audience." — Gray's Letters: June 22nd, 1760. 

" It having been observed that there was little liospitality in London — 
Johnson : ' Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleas- 
ing, will be very generally invited in London. The man, Sterne, I have been 
told, has had engagements for three months.' Goldsmith : ' And a very 
dull fellow.' Johnston : ' Why, no, sir.'" — Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

" Her [Miss Monckton's] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to 
talk together with all imaginable ease. A singular instance happened one 
evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very 
pathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it. ' I am sure,' said she, ' they have 
affected me.' 'Why,' said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about — 
' that is, because, dearest, you're a dunce.' When she some time after- 
wards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth and politeness, 
* Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not have said it.' " — 
Ibid. 

t A passage or two from Sterne's " Sermons " may not be without in- 
terest here. Is not the following, levelled against the cruelties of the 
Church of Rome, stamped with the autograph of the author of the " Senti- 
mental Journey ? " — 

" To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of 
the Inquisition — behold religion with mercy and justice chained down under 
her feet, — there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with 
racks, and instruments of torment. — Hark ! — what a piteous groan ! — See 
the melancholy wretch who uttered it, just brought forth to undergo the 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 271 

the Dean of St. Patrick's, wrote the above-quoted respectable 
letter to his friend in London : and it was in April of the same 
3'ear that he was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs. Elizabeth 
Draper, wife of " Daniel Draper, Esq., Councillor of Bomba}', 
and, in 1775, chief of the factory of Surat — a gentleman very 
much respected in that quarter of the globe." 

" I got th}^ letter last night, Eliza," Sterne writes, " on m}^ 
return from Lord Bathurst's, where 1 dined " — (the letter has 
this merit in it, that it contains a pleasant reminiscence of bet- 
ter men than Sterne, and introduces us to a portrait of a kind 
old gentleman) — "I got th}^ letter last night, Eliza, on my 
return from Lord Bathurst's ; and where I was heard — as I 
talked of thee an hour within intermission — with so much 
pleasure and attention, that the good old Lord toasted your 

anguish of a mock-trial, and endure the utmost pain that a studied system 
of religious cruelty has been able to invent. Behold this helpless victim de- 
livered up to his tormentors. His body so wasted with sorrow and long confine- 
ment, youll see every nerve and muscle as it suffers. — Observe the last movement 
of that horrid engine. — What convulsions it has thrown him into ! Con- 
sider the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretched. — What 
exquisite torture he endures by it. — 'Tis all nature can bear. — Good God ! 
see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips, willing to 
take its leave, but not suffered to depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led 
back to his cell, — dragg'd out of it again to meet the flames — and the 
insults in his last agonies, which this principle — this principle, that there 
can be religion without morality — has prepared for him." — Sermon 27th. 

The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix. vv. 1, 
2, 3, concerning a " certain Levite : " — 

" Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that 
uncomfortable blank in the heart in such a situation : for, notwithstanding 
all we meet with in books, in man}' of which, no doubt, there are a good 

many handsome things said upon the sweets of retirement, &c yet 

still ' it IS not good for man to be alone :' nor can all which the cold-hearted 
pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject, ever give one answer of satis- 
faction to the mind ; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, 
nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship ; — a good heart 
wants some object to be kind to — and the best parts of our blood, and the 
purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution. 

" Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed 
him ! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way : let me be 
wise and religious, but let me be Man ; wherever thy Providence places me, 
or whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some companion in my 
journey, be it only to remark to, ' How our shadows lengthen as our sun 
goes down ; ' — to whom I may say, ' How fresh is the face of Nature ! 
how sweet the flowers of the field! how delicious are these fruits!'" — 
Sermon ISth. 

The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous 
*' Captive." The second shows that the same reflection was suggested to 
the Rev. Laurence by a text in Judges as hy the fille-de-chambre. 

Sterne's Sermons were published as those of " Mr. Yorick." 



272 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

health three different times ; and now be is in his 85th ^'ear^ 
says he hopes to hve long enough to be introduced as a friend 
to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her eclipse all other Na- 
bobesses as much in wealth as she does already in exterior and, 
what is far better " (for Sterne is nothing without his moralit}^),- 
"in interior merit. This nobleman is an old friend of mine. 
You know he was always the protector of men of wit and 
genius, and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, 
Pope, Swift, Prior, &c., always at his table. The manner in 
which his notice began of me was as singular as it was polite. 
He came up to me one day as I was at the Princess of Wales's 
court, and said, ' I want to know you, Mr. Sterne, but it is fit 
you also should know who it is that wishes this pleasure. You 
have heard of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and 
Swifts have sung and spoken so much? I have lived my life 
with geniuses of that cast ; but have survived them ; and, 
despairing ever to find their equals, it is some years since I 
have shut up my books and closed m}- accounts ; but you have 
kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die : 
which I now do : so go home and dine with me.' This noble- 
man, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and promptness 
of a man of thirty ; a disposition to be pleased, and a power to 
please others, beyond whatever I knew : added to which a man 
of learning, courtesy, and feeling. 

" He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with uncommon satisfac- 
tion — for there was onl}' a third person, and of sensibility^ with 
us : and a most sentimental afternoon till nine o'clock have we 
passed ! * But thou, Eliza, wert the star that conducted and 
enlivened the discourse ! And when I talked not of thee, still 
didst thou fill my mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for 

* " I am glad that you are in love : 'twill cure you at least of the 
spleen, which has a bad effect on both man and woman. I myself must 
ever have some Dulcinea in my head; it harmonizes the soul ; and in tliese 
cases I first endeavor to make the lady believe so, or rather, I begin first 
to make myself believe that I am in love ; but I carry on my affairs quite 
in the French way, sentimentally : ' Uamour,' say they, ' n'est rien sans sen- 
timent.' Now, notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, 
they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same sub- 
ject called love." — Sterne's Letters : May 23, 1765. 

" P.S. — My ' Sentimental Journey ' will please Mrs. J and my 

Lydia " [his daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle] — "I can answer for those 
two. It is a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have 
been in for some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to 
love the world and our f elloAv-creatures better than we do — so it runs 
most upon those gentler passions and affections wliicli aid so much to it.'* 
— Letters [^1767]. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 273 

I am not ashamed to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best of 
all good girls ! — the sufferings I have sustained all night in 
consequence of thine, Eliza, are be3^ond the power of words. 
, . . . And so thou hast fixed th}' Bramin's portrait over th}'' 
writing-desk, and will consult it in all doubts and difficulties? 
— grateful and good girl ! Yorick smiles contentedly over all 
thou dost : his picture does not do justice to his own com- 
l)lacency. I am glad your shipmates are friendly beings " , 
(Eliza was at Deal, going back to the Councillor at Bombay, 
and indeed it was high" time she should be off). " You could 
least dispense with what is contrary to 3'our own nature, which 
is soft and gentle, P^hza ; it would civilize savages — though 
pit}^ were it thou should'st be tainted with the office. Write to 
me, my child, th}" delicious letters. Let them speak the easy 
carelessness of a heart that opens itself an^'how, ever3'how. 
Such, Eliza, I write to thee ! " (The artless rogue, of course 
he did!) ''And so I should ever love thee, most artlessl}-, 
most affectionately-, if Providence permitted thy residence in 
the same section of the globe : for I am all that honor and affec- 
tion can make me ' Thy Bramin.' " 

The Bramin continues addressing Mrs. Draper, until the 
departure of the " Earl of Chatham" Indiaman from Deal, on 
the 2nd of April, 1767. He is amiably anxious about the fresh 
paint for Eliza's cabin ; he is uncommonly solicitous about her 
companions on board : " I fear the best of your shipmates are 
only genteel by comparison with the contrasted crew with which 
thou beholdest them. So was — 3'ou know who — from the 
same fallacy which was put upon your judgment when — but I 
will not mortify 3^ou ! " 

'' You know who" was, of course, Daniel Draper, Esq., of 
Bombay — a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of 
the globe, and about whose probable health our worthy Bramin 
writes with delightful candor : — 

" I honor 3'ou, Eliza, for keeping secret some things which, 
if explained, had been a panegyric on yourself. There is a 
dignity in venerable affliction which will not allow it to appeal 
to the world for pity or redress. Well have you supported that 
character, my amiable, my philosophic friend ! And, indeed, 
I begin to think you have as many virtues as my Uncle Toby's 
widow. Talking of widows — pray, Eliza, if ever 3;ou are such, 
do not think of giving yourself to some wealth3^ Nabob, because 
I design to marry you myself. My wife cannot hve long, and 
I know not the woman I should like so well for her substitute as 
\-ourself. 'Tis true I am ninetv-five in constitution, and you 

18 



274 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

but twenty-five ; but what I want in j^outh, I will make up in 
wit and good-humor. Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron 
his Maintenon, or Waller his Saccharissa. Tell me, in answer 
to this, that 3^ou approve and honor the proposal." 

Approve and honor the proposal ! The coward was writing 
gay letters to his friends this while, with sneering allusions to 
this poor foolish Bramine. Her ship was not out of the Downs, 
and the charming Sterne was at the " Mount Coffee-house,'* 
with a sheet of gilt-edged paper before him, offering that 
precious treasure his heart to Lady P-^ — , asking whether it 
gave her pleasure to see him unhappy ? whether it added to her 
triumph that her eyes and lips had turned a man into a fool? 
— quoting the Lord's Pra3'er, with a horrible baseness of 
blasphemy, as a proof that he had desired not to be led into 
temptation, and swearing himself the most tender and sincere 
fool in the world. It was from his home at Coxwould that he 
wrote the Latin letter, which, I suppose, he was ashamed to 
put into English. I find in m}^ copy of the Letters, that there 
is a note of I can't call it admiration, at Letter 112, which seems 
to announce that there was a No. 3 to whom the wretched worn- 
out old scamp was paying his addresses ; * and the 3'ear after, 
having come back to his lodgings in Bond Street, with his 
*' Sentimental Journey" to launch upon the town, eager as 
ever for praise and pleasure — as vain, as wicked, as witty, 

* "To Mrs. H . 



"Coxwould, Nov. 15, 1767. 

" Now be a good dear woman, my H , and execute those commissions 

well, and when I see you I will give you a kiss — there's for you! But I 
have something else for you wliich I am fabricating at a great rate, and 
that is my ' Sentimental Journey,' which shall make you cry as much as it 

has affected me, or I will give up the business of sentimental writing 

" I am yours, &c. &c., 

" T. Shandy." 

''To THE Earl of 

" Coxwould, Nov. 28, 1767. 

" My Lord, — *Tis with the greatest pleasure I take my pen to thank 
your lordship for your letter of inquiry about Yorick : he was worn out, 
both his spirits and body, with the ' Sentimental Journey.' 'Tis true, then, 
an author must feel himself, or his reader will not ; but I have torn my 
whole frame into pieces by my feelings: I believe the brain stands as 
much in need of recruiting as the body. Therefore I shall set out for 
town the twentieth of next month, after having recruited myself a week 
at York. I might indeed solace myself with my wife (who is come from 
France) ; but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental being, whatever 
your lordship may think to the contrary." 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 275 

as false as he had ever been — death at length seized the feeble 
wretch, and, on the 18th of March, 1768, that " bale of cadav- 
erous goods,** as he calls his bod3% was consigned to Pluto.* 
In his last letter there is one sign of grace — the real affection 
with which he entreats a friend to be a guardian to his daughter 
Lj'dia. All his letters to her are artless, kind, affectionate, 
and not sentimental ; as a hundred pages in his writings are 
beautiful, and full, not of surprising humor merely, but of 
genuine love and kindness. A perilous trade, indeed, is that 
of a man who has to bring his tears and laughter, his recollec- 
tions, his personal griefs and J03^s, his private thoughts and 
feelings to market, to write them on paper, and sell them for 
money. Does he exaggerate his grief, so as to get his reader's 
pit}^ for a false sensibility? feign indignation, so as to establish 
a character for virtue? elaborate repartees, so that he raa3^pass 
for a wit? steal from other authors^ and put down the theft to 
the credit side of his own reputation for ingenuity and learning ? 
feign originality? affect benevolence or misanthropy? appeal 
to the gallery gods with claptraps and vulgar baits to catch 
applause V 

How much of the paint and emphasis is necessary for the 
fair busmess of the stage, and how much of the rant and rouge 
is put on for the vanity of the actor. His audience trusts him : 
can he trust himself? How much was deliberate calculation and 
imposture — how much was false sensibilit}' — and how much 
true feeling? Where did the lie begin, and did he know where? 

* " In February, 1768, Laurence Sterne, his frame exhausted by long 
debiUtating illness,*expired at his lodgings in Bond Street, London. There 
was something in the manner of his death singularly resembling the par- 
ticulars detailed by Mrs. Quickly as attending that of Falstaff, the compeef 
of Yorick for infinite jest, however unlike in other particulars. As he lay 
on his bed totally exhausted, he complained that his feet were cold, and 
requested the female attendant to chafe them. She did so, and it seemed 
to relieve him. He complained that the cold came up higher; and whilst 
the assistant was in the act of chafing his ankles and legs, he expired with- 
out a groan. It was also remarkable that his death took place much in 
the manner which he himself had wished ; and that the last offices were 
rendered him, not in his own house, or by the hand of kindred affection, 
but in an inn, and by strangers. 

" We . are well acquainted with Sterne's features and personal appear- 
ance, to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with 
a hectic and consumptive appearance." — Sir Walter Scott. 

" It is known that Sterne died in hired lodgings, and I have been told 
that his attendants robbed him even of his gold sleeve-buttons while he was 
expiring." — Dr. Ferriar. 

"He died at No. 41 (now a cheesemonger's) on the west side of Old 
Bond Street." — Handbook of' London. 



276 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

and where did the truth end in the art and scheme of this man 
of genius, tliis actor, this quack? Some time since, I was in 
the compau}^ of a French actor, wlio began after dinner, and 
at his own request, to sing French songs of the sort called des 
chansons grivoises^ and which he performed admirably-, and to 
the dissatisfaction of most persons present. Having finished, 
these, he commenced a sentimental ballad — it was so charm- 
ingl}' sung, that it touched all persons present, and especiallj' 
the singer himself, whose voice trembled, whose e3^es filled with 
emotion, and who was snivelling and weeping quite genuine 
tears by the time his own ditty was over. I suppose Sterne 
had this artistical sensibiiit}' ; he used to blubber perpetuall}' in 
his stud}', and finding his tears infectious, and that they brought 
him a great popular! t}', he exercised the lucrative gift of weep- 
ing : he utilized it, and cried on ever}^ occasion. I own that I 
don't value or respect much the cheap dribble of those fountains. 
He fatigues me with his perpetual disquiet and his uneasj^ ap- 
peals to my risible or sentimental faculties. He is alwa3's look- 
ing in my face, watching his effect, uncertain whether I think 
him an impostor or not ; posture-making, coaxing, and im- 
ploring me. " See what sensibilit}" I have — own now that I'm 
very clever — do cr^' now, you can't resist this." The humor 
of Swift and Rabelais, whom he pretended to succeed, poured 
from them as naturall}^ as song does from a bird ; thej' lose no 
manly dignit}' with it, but laugh their heart}* great laugh out 
of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this man — 
who can make you laugh, who can make 3'ou cry too — never 
lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience repose ; when 
3'ou are quiet, he fancies he must rouse 3'ou, and turns over 
head and heels, or sidles up and whispers a nast}^ stor3'. The 
man is a great jester, not a great humorist. He goes to work 
systematically and of cold blood ; paints his face, puts on his 
ruflT and motley clothes, and la3's down his carpet and tumbles 
on it. 

For instance, take the " Sentimental Journe3'," and see in 
the writer the deliberate propensit}' to make points and seek 
applause. He gets to " Dessein's Hotel," he wants a carriage 
to travel to Paris, he goes to the inn-3'ard, and begins what 
the actors call " business" at once. There is that little car- 
riage (the desohligeante) . "Four months had elapsed since 
it had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur 
Dessein's coach-3^ard, and having sallied out thence but a 
vamped-up business at first, though it had been twice taken 
to pieces on Mount Sennis. it had not profited much hy its 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 277 

adventures, but by none so little as the standing so many 
months unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessein's coach- 
yard. Much, indeed, was not to be said for it — but some- 
thing might — and when a few words will rescue miser}^ out 
of her distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them." 

Le tour est fait ! Paillasse has tumbled ! Paillasse has 
jumped over the desohligeante^ cleared it, hood and all, and 
bows to the noble company. Does an3'body believe that 
this is a real Sentiment? that this luxury of generosity, this 
gallant rescue of Misery — out of an old cab, is genuine 
feeling? It is as genuine as the virtuous oratory of Joseph 
Surface when he begins, " The man who," &c. &c., and wishes 
to pass off for a saint with his credulous good-humored 
dupes. 

Our friend purchases the carriage : after turning that noto- 
rious old monk to good account, and effecting (like a soft and 
good-natured Paillasse as he was, and ver}' free with his money 
when he had it,) an exchange of snuff-boxes with the old 
Franciscan, jogs out of Calais ; sets down in immense figures 
on the credit side of his account the sous he gives away to the 
Montreuil beggars ; and at Nampont, gets out of the chaise 
and whimpers over that famous dead donkey, for which any 
sentimentalist may cr}'' who will. It is agreeably and skil- 
fully done — that dead jackass: like M. de Soubise's cook 
on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up quite 
tender and with a very piquante sauce. But tears and fine 
feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral 
sermon, and horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, 
and a hearse with a dead donkey inside ! Psha, mountebank ! 
I'll not give thee one penny more for that trick, donke}" and 
all! 

This donke}' had appeared once before with signal effect. 
In 1765, three years before the publication of the '' Sentimen- 
tal Journey," the seventh and eight volumes of "Tristram 
Shandy" were given to the world, and the famous Lyons 
donkey makes his entr}^ in those volumes (pp. 315, 316) : — ■ 

"'Twas by a poor ass, with a couple of large panniers at 
his back, who had just turned in to collect eleemosynary 
turnip-tops and cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious, with his 
two forefeet at the inside of the threshold, and with his two 
hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well 
whether he was to go in or no. 

" Now 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot 
bear to strike : there is a patient endurance of suffering wrote 



278 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage which pleads so 
mightil}- for him, that it always disarms me, and to that degree 
that I do not like to speak unkindly to him : on the contrary, 
meet him where I will, whether in town or country, in cart 
or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever 
something civil to say to him on my part ; and, as one word 
begets another (if he has as little to do as . I) , I generally fall 
into conversation with him ; and surely never is my imagina- 
tion so busy as in framing responses from the etchings of his 
countenance ; and where those carr}^ me not deep enough, in 
flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural 
for an ass to think — as well as a man upon the occasion. 
In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings 
below me with whom I can do this. . . . With an ass I can 
commune forever. 

"'Come, Honesty,' said I, seeing it was impracticable to 
pass betwixt him and the gate, ' art thou for coming in or 
going out ? ' 

" The ass twisted his head round to look up the street. 

" ' Well ! ' replied I, ' we'll wait a minute for thy driver.* 

"He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wist- 
fuU}'' the opposite way. 

" ' I understand thee perfectly,' answered I : ' if thou tak- 
est a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. 
Well ! a minute is but a minute ; and if it saves a fellow- 
creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill spent.' 

" He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse 
went on, and, in the little peevish contentions between hunger 
and unsavoriness, had dropped it out of his mouth, half a 
dozen times, and had picked it up again. ' God help thee, 
Jack ! ' said I, ' thou hast a bitter breakfast on't — and many 
a bitter day's labor, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its 
wages ! 'Tis all, all bitterness to thee — whatever life is to 
others ! And now th}" mouth if one knew the truth of it, is 
as bitter, I dare say, as soot ' (for he had cast aside the stem) , 
* and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world that 
■will give thee a macaroon.' In saying this, I pulled out a 
paper of 'em, which I had just bought, and gave him one ; — 
and, at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me 
that there was more of pleasantr}- in the conceit of seeing how 
an ass would eat a macaroon, than of benevolence in giving 
him one, which presided in the act. 

"When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to 
come in. The poor beast was heavy loaded — his legs seemed 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 279 

to tremble under him — he hung rather backwards, and, as I 
palled at his halter, it broke in m}^ hand. He looked up pen- 
sive in m}' face : ' Don't thrash me with it : but if you will 3'ou 
may.' ' If I do,' said I, ' I'll be d ." 

A critic who refuses to see in this charming description wit, 
humor, pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real sentiment, 
must be hard indeed to move and to please. A page or two 
farther we come to a description not less beautiful — a land- 
scape and figures, delicioush^ painted b}^ one who had the 
keenest enjo3niient and the most tremulous sensibiUty : — 

" 'Twas in the road between Nismes and Lunel, where is 
the best Muscatto wine in all France : the sun was set, they 
had done their work : the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh, 
and the swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made 
a dead point. ' 'Tis the pipe and tambourine,' said I — 'I 
never will argue a point with one of 3'our family as long as I 
live ; ' SK) leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into 
this ditch and t'other into that, ' I'll take a dance,' said I, ' so 
sta}' you here.' 

"A sunburnt daughter of labor rose up from the group 
to meet me as I advanced towards them ; her hair, which was 
of a dark chestnut approaching to a black, was tied up in a 
knot, all but a single tress. 

'''We want a cavalier,' said she, holding out both her 
hands, as if to offer them. ' And a cavalier j^ou shall have,* 
said I, taking hold of both of them. ' We conld not have 
done without you,' said she, letting go one hand, with self- 
taught politeness, and leading me up with the other. 

"A lame 3'outh, whom Apollo had recompensed with a 
pipe, and to which he had added a tambourine of his own accord, 
ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank. ' Tie 
me up this tress instantl}",' said Nannette, putting a piece of 
string into my hand. It taught me to forget I was a stran- 
ger. The whole knot fell down — we had been seven years 
acquainted. The 3'outh struck the note upon the tambourine, 
his pipe followed, and off we bounded. 

' ' The sister of the youth — who had stolen her voice from 
heaven — sang alternately with her brother. 'Twas a Gascoigne 
roundelay : ' Viva la-Joia, Jidon la tristessa.' The n3'mphs 
joined in unison, and their swains an octave below them. 

" Viva la joia was in Nannette's lips, vivalajoia in her 
eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space be- 
twixt us. She looked amiable. Wh}^ could I not live and 
end my days thus? 'Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows!* 



280 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

cried I, ' whj' could not a man sit down in the lap of content 
here, and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to 
heaven with this nut-brown maid ? ' Capriciously did she bend 
her head on one side, and dance up insidious. ' Then 'tis time 
to dance off,' quoth I." 

And with this pretty dance and chorus, the volume artfully 
concludes. Even here one can't give the whole description. 
There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that 
were better away, a latent corruption — a hint as of an impure 
presence.* 

Some of that drear}' double entendre ma}^ be attributed to 
freer times and manners than ours, but not all. The foul 
Satyr's e3^es leer out of the leaves constantly : the last words 
the famous author wrote were bad and wicked — the last lines 
the poor stricken wretch penned were for pit}^ and pardon. I 
think of these past writers and of one who lives amongst us now, 
and am grateful for the innocent laughter and the sweet and un- 
sullied page which the author of '• David Copperfield" gives to 
my children. 

* " "With regard to Sterne, and the charge of licentiousness which 
presses so seriously upon his character as a writer, I would remark that 
there is a sort of knowingness, the wit of which depends, 1st, on the 
modesty it gives pain to ; or, 2ndly, on the innocence and innocent igno- 
rance over which it triumphs ; or, 3rdly, on a certain oscillation in the in- 
dividual's own mind between the remaining good and the encroaching evil 
of his nature — a sort of dallying with the devil — a fluxionary art of 
combining courage and cowardice, as when a man snuffs a candle with his 
fingers for the first time, or better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring 
with which a child touches a hot tea-urn, because it has been forbidden ; 
so that the mind has its own white and black angel; the same or similar 
amusement as may be supposed to take place between an old debauchee 
and a prude — the feeling resentment on the one hand, from a prudential 
anxiety to preserve appearances and have a character ; and, on the other, 
an inward sympathy with the enemy. We have only to suppose society 
innocent, and then nine-tenths of this sort of wit would be like a stone that 
falls in snow, making no sound, because exciting no resistance ; the re- 
mainder rests on its being an offence against the good manners of human 
nature itself. 

" This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be combined with Avit, 
drollery, fancy, and even humor ; and we have only to regret the misal- 
liance ; but that the latter are quite distinct from the former, may be made 
evident by abstracting in our imagination the morality of the characters of 
Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are all antagonists to this 
spurious sort of wit, from the rest of ' Tristram Shandy,' and by supposing, 
instead of them, the presence of two or three callous debauchees. The re- 
sult will be pure disgust. Sterne cannot be too severely censured for thus 
using the best dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for 
the basest." — Coleridge : Literartj Remains, vol. i. pp. 141, 1-12. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 281 

" Jete sur cette boule, 
Laid, chetif et souffrant ; 
Etouffe dans la foule, 
Faute d'etre assez grand : 

" Une plainte touchante 
De ma bouehe sortit. 
Le bon Dieu me dit : Chante, 
Chante, pauvre petit ! 

" Clianter, ou je ra'abuse. 
Est ma tache ici bas. 
Toux ceux qu'ainsi j'amuse, 
Ne m'aimeront-ils pas ? " 

In those charming lines of Beranger, one may fancy de- 
scribed the career, the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature 
of Goldsmith, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who, of 
the millions whom he has amused, doesn't love him? To be 
the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a 
man ! * A wild 3'outh, wayward, but full of tenderness and 
affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been 
passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see 
the great world out of doors, and achieve name and fortune ; 
and after years of dire struggle, and neglect and poverty, his 
heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had 
longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a 
book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home : 
he paints the friends and scenes of his 3'outh, and peoples 
Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander 
he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him, and dies 
with it on his breast. His nature is truant ; in repose it longs 
for change : as on the journey it looks back for friends and 
quiet. He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-mor- 
row, or in writing yesterday's elegy ; and he would fly away 
this hour, but that a cage and necessity keep him. What is 
the charm of his verse, of his st3de, and humor? His sweet 

* " He was a friend to virtue, and in liis most playful pages never for- 
gets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of feeling distin- 
guishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence to the generosity 
of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last guinea 

" The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleasing 
truth with which the principal characters are designed, make the ' Vicar 
of Wakefield ' one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious composition 
on which the human mind was ever employed. 

" .... We read the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' in youth and in age — we 
return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author wlio con- 
trives so well to reconcile us to human nature." — Sir Walter Scott. 



282 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremuteus 
S3'mpath3', the weakness which he owns ? Your love for him is 
half pity. You come hot and tired from the da3''s battle, 'and 
this sweet minstrel sino;s to vou. Who could harm the kind 
vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no 
weapon, save the harp on which he plays to you ; and with 
which he delights great and humble, young and old, the cap- 
tains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the women 
and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and 
sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet 
story of the ' ' Vicar of Wakefield " * he has found entry into 

* " Now Herder came," says Goethe in his Autobiography, relating his 
first acquaintance with Goldsmith's masterpiece, " and together with his 
great knowledge brought many other aids, and the later publications be- 
sides. Among these he announced to us the * Vicar of Wakefield ' as an 
excellent work, with the German translation of which he would make us 
acquainted by reading it aloud to us himself 

" A Protestant country clergyman is perhaps the most beautiful subject 
for a modern idyl ; he appears like Melchizedeck, as priest and king in one 
person. To the most innocent situation which can be imagined on earth, 
to that of a husbandman, he is, for the most part, united by similarity of 
occupation as well as by equality in family relationships ; he is a father, a 
master of a family, an agriculturist, and thus perfectly a member of the 
community. On this pure, beautiful earthly foundation rests his higher 
calling; to him is it given to guide men through life, to take care of their 
spiritual education, to bless them at all the leading epochs of their exist- 
ence, to instruct, to strengthen, to console them, and if consolation is not 
sufficient for the present, to call up and guarantee the hope of a happier 
future. Imagine such a man with pure human sentiments, strong enough 
not to deviate from them under any circumstances, and by this already 
elevated above the multitude of whom one cannot expect purity and firm- 
ness ; give him the learning necessary for his office, as well as a cheerful, 
equable activity, which is even passionate, as it neglects no moment to do 
good — and you will have him well endowed. But at the same time add 
the necessary limitation, so that he must not only pause in a small circle, 
but may also, perchance, pass over to a smaller ; grant him good-nature, 
placability, resolution, and everything else praiseworthy that springs from 
a decided character, and over all this a cheerful spirit of compliance, and 
a smiHng toleration of his own failings and those of others, — then you 
will have put together pretty well the image of our excellent Wakefield. 

" The delineation of this character on his course of life through joys 
and sorrows, the ever-increasing interest of the story, by the combination 
of the entirely natural with the strange and the singular, make this novel 
one of the best which has ever been written ; besides this, it has the great 
advantage that it is quite moral, nay, in a pure sense. Christian — repre- 
sents the reward of a good-will and perseverance in the right, strengthens 
an unconditional confidence in God, and attests the final triumph of good 
over evil ; and all this without a trace of cant or pedantry. The author 
was preserved from both of these by an elocution of mind that shows itself 
throughout in the form of irony, by which this little work must appear to 
us as wise as it is amiable. The author, Dr. Goldsmith, has, without ques- 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 283 

evei^' castle and ever^^ hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, how- 
ever bus}^ or hard, but once or twice in our Hves has passed an 
evening with him, and undergone the charm of his delightful 
music. 

Goldsmith's father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, 
whom we all of us know.* Swift was 3'et alive, when the little 
Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of 
Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child's 
birth, Charles Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the 
county Westmeath, that sweet ''Auburn" which every person 

tion, a great insight into the moral world, into its strength and its infirmities ; 
but at tlie same time he can thankfully acknowledge that he is an English- 
man, and reckon highly the advantages which his country and his nation 
afford him. The family, with the delineation of which he occupies him- 
self, stands upon one of the last steps of citizen comfort, and yet comes in 
contact with the highest ; its narrow circle, which becomes still more con- 
tracted, touches upon the great world through the natural and civil course 
of things ; this little skiff floats on the agitated waves of English life, and 
in weal or woe it has to expect injury or help from the vast fleet which 
sails around it. 

" I may suppose that my readers know this work, and have it in mem- 
ory ; whoever hears it named for the first time here, as well as he vvho is 
induced to read it again, will thank me." — Goethe : Truth and Poetry ; 
from mi/ own Life. (English Translation, vol. i. pp. 878, 379.) 

" He seems from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one 
bright, the otlier blundering; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his cradle 
by the ' good people ' who haunted his birthplace, the old goblin mansion 
on the banks of the Inny. 

" He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so term it, 
throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail at school, academy, 
or college : they unfit him for close study and practical science, and render 
him heedless of everything that does not address itself to his poetical 
imagination and genial and festive feelings ; they dispose him to break 
away from restraint, to stroll about hedges, green lanes, and haunted 
streams, to revel with jovial companions, or to rove the country like a gipsy 
in quest of odd adventures 

" Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the 
poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. 
His ^relish for humor, and for the study of character, as we have before 
observed, brought him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind ; but 
he discriminated between their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or 
rather wrought from the whole store familiar features of life which form 
the staple of his most popular writings." — Washington Irving. 

* " The family of Goldsmith, Goldsmyth, or, as it was occasionally 
written, Gouldsmith, is of considerable standing in Ireland, and seems 
always to have held a respectable station in society. Its origin is English, 
supposed to be derived from that which was long settled at Crayford in 
Kent." — Prior's Life of Goldsmith. 

Oliver's father, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were 
clergymen ; and two of them married clergymen's daughters. 



284 EXGLTSH HUMORISTS. 

who hears me has seen in fanc}^ Here the kind parson * 
brought up his eight children ; and loving all the world, as 
his son sa3's, fancied all the world loved him. He had a crowd 
of poor dependants besides those hungry children. He kept an 
open table ; round which sat flatterers and poor friends, who 
laughed at the honest rector's man}' jokes, and ate the produce 
of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish 
house in the present day can fancy that one of Lisso}'. The 
old beggar still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf; the 
maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes and buttermilk ; 
the poor cottier still asks his honor's charitj'-, and pra3's God 
bless his reverence for the sixpence : the ragged pensioner still 
takes his place b}' right and sufferance. There's still a crowd 
in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlor-table, profusion, 
confusion, kindness, povert}'. If an Irishman comes to London 
to make his fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish dependants who 
take a percentage of his earnings. The good Charles Gold- 
smith I left but little provision for his Imngrj^ race when death 



* " At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 
His looks adorn 'd the venerable place ; 
Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, 
And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. 
The service past, around the pious man, 
With steady zeal each honest rustic ran ; 
E'en children follow'd with endearing wile, 
And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile. 
His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, 
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest; 
To them his lieart, his love, his griefs were given, 
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. 
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm. 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 

The Deserted Village. 

t "In May this year (1768), he lost his brother, the Rev. Henry 
Goldsmith, for whom he had been unable to obtain preferment in the 
church 

" .... To the curacy of Kilkenny West, the moderate stipend of 
which, forty pounds a year, is sufficiently celebrated by his brother's lines. 
It has been stated that Mr. Goldsmith added a school, which, after having 
been held at more than one place in the vicinity, was finally fixed at Lissoy. 
Here his talents and industry gave it celebrity, and under his care the sons 
of many of the neighboring gentry received their education. A fever 
breaking out among the boys about 1765, they dispersed for a time, but re- 
assembling at Athlone, he continued his scholastic labors there until the 
time of his death, which happened, like that of his brother, about the forty- 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 285 

summoned him : and one of his daughters being engaged to a 
Squire of rather superior dignit}', Charles Goldsmith impover- 
ished the rest of his famil}^ to provide the girl with a dowr3\ 

The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and 
ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of 
poor little Oliver's face, when the child was eight 3'ears old, 
and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman 
in his father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced 
him a dunce : Paddy B^-rne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him 
in hand ; and from Paddy Byrne, he was transmitted to a 
clergyman at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in 
those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed under 
Mr. So-and-so's ferule. Poor little ancestors ! It is hard to 
think how ruthlessly you were birched ; and how much of need- 
less whipping and tears our small forefathers had to undergo ! 
A relative — kind uncle Contarine, took the main charge of 
little Noll ; who went through his school-da3's righteously doing 
as little work as he could : robbing orchards, playing at ball, 
and making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent 
it to him. Everybody knows the story of that famous "Mis- 
take of a Night," when the young schoolboy, provided with a 
guinea and a nag, rode up to the "best house" in Ardagh, 
called for the landlord's compan}^ over a bottle of wine at sup- 
per, and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning ; and 
found, when he asked for the bill, that the best house was 
Squire Featherstone's, and not the inn for which he mistook it. 
Who does not know every stor}^ about Goldsmith? That is a 
delightful and fantastic picture of the child dancing and caper- 
ing about in the kitchen at home, when the old fiddler gibed 
at him for his ugliness, and called him ^sop ; and little Noll 
made his repartee of " Heralds*iDroclaim aloud this saying — 
See ^sop dancing and his nionkej^ playing." One can fancj^ 
a queer pitiful look of humor and ajDpeal upon that little scarred 
face — the funny little dancing figure, the funn}' little brogue. 
In his life, and his writings, which are the honest expression 
of it, he is constant^ bewailing that homel}'^ face and person ; 
anon, he surveys them in the glass ruefully ; and presently as- 

fifth year of his age. He was a man of an excellent heart and an amiable 
disposition." — Prior's Goldsmith. 

" Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 
My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee : 
Still to my brother tm*ns witli ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain." 

The Traveller. 



286 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

sumes the most comical dignitj^ He likes'to deck out his little 
person in splendor und fine colors. He presented himself to 
be examined for ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches, and 
said honestly that he did not like to go into the church, because 
he was fond of colored clothes. When he tried to practise as 
a doctor, he got by hook or bj' crook a black velvet suit, and 
looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat over a 
patch on the old coat : in better days he bloomed out in plum- 
color, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those 
splendors the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filb}', the tailor, 
have never been paid to this day : perhaps the kind tailor and 
his creditor have met and settled the Httle account in Hades.* 

They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dub- 
lin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a 
diamond. Whose diamond was it? Not the young sizar's, 
who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was 
idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure : j he learned his way 
early to the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, 
for the street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem : and 
his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. 
He was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, 
and took the box on the ear so much to heart, that he packed 
up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disap- 
peared from college and famil3^ He said he intended to go to 
America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal 
came home ruefull}', and the good folks there killed their calf — 
it was but a lean one — and welcomed him back. 

After college, he hung about his mother's hou^e, and lived 
for some years the life of a buckeen — passed a month with 
this relation and that, a 3^ear with one patron, a great deal of 
time at the public-house. | Tji red of this life, it was resolved 
that he should go to London, and stud}" at the Temple ; but he 

* " When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William 
Filby (amounting in all to 79Z.) was for clothes supplied to this nephew 
Hodson." — Forster's Goldsmith, p. 520. 

As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page) "a prosper- 
ous Irish gentleman," it is not unreasonable to wish that he had cleared off 
Mr. niby's bill. 

t " Poor fellow ! He hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey 
from a goose, but when he saw it on the table." — Cumberland's Memoiro. 

X " These youthful follies, like the fermentation of liquors, often dis- 
turb the mind only in order to its future refinement : a life spent in phleg- 
matic apathy resembles tho^ic liquors which never ferment, and are 
consequently always muddy." — Goldsmith : Memoir of VoUalre. 

" He [Johnson] said * Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There 
appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young.' " — Boswell. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 287 

o-ot no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than 
bubUn, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him 
for his outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable for- 
giveness of home. Then he determined to be a doctor, and 
uncle Contarine helped him to a couple of years at Edinburgh. 
Then from Edinburgh he felt that he ought to hear the famous 
professors of Ley den and Paris, and wrote most amusing pom- 
pous letters to his uncle about the great Farheim, Du Petit, 
and Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to fol- 
low. If uncle Contarine believed those letters — if Oliver's 
mother believed that story which the youth related of his going 
to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America, of his 
having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit ou 
board ; of the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's 
valuable luggage, in a nameless ship, never to return ; if uncle 
Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, 
they must have been a very simple pair ; as it was a very sim- 
ple rogue indeed who cheated them. When the lad, after fail- 
ing in his clerical examination, after failing in his plan for 
studying the law, took leave of these projects and of his 
parents, and set out for Edinburgh, he saw mother, and uncle, 
and lazy Ballymahon, and green native turf, and sparkling 
river for the last time. He was never to look on old Ireland 
more, and only in fancy revisit her. 

" But me not destined such delights to share, 
My prime of life in wandering spent and care. 
Impelled, with steps unceasing, to pursue 
Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view ; 
That like the circle bounding earth and skies 
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies : 
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, 
And find no spot of all the world my own," 

I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which en- 
abled Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, 
always to retain a cheerful spirit and to keep his manly benev- 
olence and love of truth intact, as if these treasures had been 
confided to him for the public benefit, and he was accountable 
to posterity for their honorable employ; and a constancy 
equally happy and admirable I think was shown by Goldsmith, 
Vv'hose sweet and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the 
midst of a life's storm, and rain, and bitter weather.* The 

* " An * inspired idiot,' Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him [John- 
son] Yet, on the wliole, there is no evil in the ' gooseberry -fool,' but 

rather much good ; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than Johnson's ; and all 



288 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

poor fellow was never so friendless but he could befriend some 
one ; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of 
his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but 
his flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy 
in the drearj^ London court. He could give the coals in that 
queer coal-scuttle we read of to his poor neighbor : he could 
give away his blankets in college to the poor widow, and warm 
himself as he best might in the feathers : he could pawn his 
coat to save his landlord from gaol : when he was a school- 
usher he spent his earnings in treats for the bo3'S, and the 
good-natured schoolmaster's wife said justl}' that she ought to 
keep Mr. Goldsmith's mone}^ as well as the young gentlemen's. 
When he met his pupils in later life, nothing would satisfj^ the 
Doctor but he must treat them still. " Have you seen the 
print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds?" he asked one of his 
old pupils. " Not seen it? not bought it? Sure, Jack, if your 
picture had been pubUshed, I'd not have been without it half 
an hour." His purse and his heart were everybody's, and his 
friends' as much as his own. When he was at the height of 
his reputation, and the Earl of Northumberland, going as 
Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be of anv ser- 
vice to Dr. Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, 
and not himself, to the great man. " My patrons," he gal- 
lantly said, "are the booksellers, and I want no others."* 
Hard patrons they were, and hard work he did ; but he did not 

tlie more genuine that he himself could never become conscious of it, — 
though unhappily never cease attemptini^ to become so : the author of the 
genuine * Vicar of Wakefield/ nill he will he, must needs fly towards such 
a mass of genuine manhood." — Carlyle's Essays (2nd ed.), vol. iv. p. 9L 

* " At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great 
for subsistence ; they have now no other patrons but the public, and the 
pubhc, collectively considered, is a good and a generous master. It is 
indeed too frequently mistaken as to the merits of every candidate for 
favor; but to make amends, it is never mistaken long. A performance 
indeed may be forced for a time into reputation, but, destitute of real 
merit, it soon sinks ; time, the touchstone of what is truly valuable, will 
soon discover the fraud, and an author should never arrogate to himself 
any share of success till his works have been read at least ten years with 
satisfaction. 

" A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly 
sensible of their value. Every polite member of the community, by buying 
what he writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule, therefore, of 
living in a garret might have been wit in the last age, but continues such 
no longer, because no longer true. A writer of real merit now may easily 
be rich, if his heart be set only on fortune : and for those who have no 
merit, it is but fit that such should remain in merited obscurity." — Gold- 
smith : Citizen of the World, Let. 84. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 289 

complain much : if in his earh' writings some bitter words es- 
caped him, some allusions to neglect and povert}', he withdrew 
these expressions when his works were republished, and better 
da^'s seemed to open for him ; and he did not care to complain 
that printer or publisher had overlooked his merit, or left him 
poor. The Court face was turned from honest Oliver, the 
Court patronized Beattie ; the fashion did not shine on him — 
fashion adored Sterne.* Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the 
great writer of comed}^ of his da^^ A little — not ill-humor, 
but plaintiveness — a little betra3'al of wounded pride which 
he showed render him not the less amiable. The author of the 
" Vicar of Wakefield " had a right to protest when Newbery 
kept back the MS. for two 3'ears ; had a right to be a little 
peevish with Sterne ; a little angry when Colman's actors de- 
clined their parts in his delightful corned}", when the manager 
refused to have a scene painted for it, and pronounced its 
damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with 
him ; but he had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Rey- 
nolds, and the great Gibbon, and the great Burke, and the 
great Fox — friends and admirers illustrious indeed, as famous 
as those who, fifty years before, sat round Pope's table. 

Nobody knows, and I dare sa}" Goldsmith's buoj^ant temper 
kept no account of all the pains which he endured during the 
earty period of his literarj^ career. Should any man of letters 
in our day have to bear up against such, heaven grant he may 
come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure kind 

* Goldsmith attacked Sterne obviously enough, censuring his indecency, 
and slighting his wit, and ridiculing his manner, in the 63rd letter in the 
"Citizenof the World." 

" As in common conversation," says he, " the best way to make tlie 
audience laugh is by first laughing yourself ; so in writing, the properest 
manner is to show an attempt at humor, which will pass upon most for 
humor in reahty. To effect this, readers must be treated with the most 
perfect familiarity ; in one page the author is to make them a low bow, 
and in the next to pull them by the nose ; he must talk in riddles, and then 
send them to bed in order to dream for the solution," &c. 

Sterne's humorous viot on the subject of the gravest part of the charges, 
then, as now, made against him, may perhaps be quoted here, from the 
excellent, the respectable Sir Walter Scott : — 

" Soon after ' Tristram' had appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady 
of fortune and condition, whether she had read his book. ' I have not, Mr. 
Sterne,' was the answer ; ' and to be plain with you, I am informed it is 
not proper for female perusal.' ' My dear good lady,' replied the autlior, 
' do not be gulled by such stories ; the book is like your young heir there ' 
(pointing to a child of three years old, who was rolling on the carpet in 
his white tunic) : ' he shows at times a good deal that is usually concealed, 
but it is all in perfect innocence.' " 

19 



290 ENGLISH HUMORISTS, 

heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. 
The insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of 
— slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity pervert- 
ing his commonest motives and actions ; he had his share of 
these, and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at 
seeing a woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that 
a creature so very gentle and weak, and full of love, should 
have had to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to un- 
dergo — to own to fault and deprecate the anger of ruffians. 
There is a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in 
which poor Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain books 
sent by GriflSths are in the hands of a friend from whom Gold- 
smith had been forced to borrow money. " He was wild, sir," 
Johnson said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with his great, 
wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart — "Dr. 
Goldsmith was wild, sir ; but he is so no more." Ah ! if we 
pity the good and weak man who suffers undeservedl}', let us 
deal very gentl}^ with him from whom miser}^ extorts not only 
tears, but shame ; let us think humbly and charitabl}^ of the 
human nature that suffers so sadl}'- and falls so low. Whose 
turn may it be to-morrow? What weak heart, confident before 
trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible? Cover 
the good man who has been vanquished — cover his face and 
pass on. 

For the last half-dozen 3'ears of his life Goldsmith was far 
removed from the pressure of an}^ ignoble necessit}^ : and in the 
receipt, indeed, of a pretty large income from the booksellers 
his patrons. Had he lived but a few 3'ears more, his public 
fame would have been as great as his private reputation, and 
he might have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which his 
country' has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius 
who has touched on almost every subject of literature, and 
touched nothing that he did not adorn. Except in rare in- 
stances, a man is known in our profession, and esteemed as a 
skilful workman, years before the luckv hit which trebles his 
usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength 
of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers 
and friends the most illustrious literarj^ men of his time,* fame 

* " Goldsmith told us that he was now busy in writing a Natural His- 
tory ; and that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken lodgings at a 
farmer's house, near to the six-mile stone in the Edgware Road, and had 
carried down his books in two returned post-chaises. He said he believed 
the farmer's family thought him an odd character, similar to that in which 
the Spectator appeared to his landlady and her children ; he was 2'he Gen- 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 291 

and prosperit}^ might have been in store for Goldsmith, had 
fate so willed it ; and, at fort3'-six, had not sudden disease 
carried him off. I say prosperity rather than competence, for 
it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs 
or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must 
be remembered that he owed 2,000/. when he died. "Was 
ever poet," Johnson asked, "so trusted before?" As has 
been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his 
life was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry 
beggars and lazy dependants. If the}^ came at a lucky time 
(and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, 
and watched his pay-day) , he gave them of his money : if they 
begged on empt^'-purse days he gave them his promissor}' bills : 
or he treated them to a tavern where he had credit ; or he 
obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats, 
for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the shears 
of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load 
of debt and labor, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, 
running from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing 
looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, de- 
vising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new come- 
dies, all sorts of new literar}' schemes, flying from all these into 
seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure — at last, at five- 
and-forty, death seized hun and closed his career.* I have 
been man}' a time in the chambers in the Temple which were 
his, and passed up the staircase, which Johnson, and Burke, 
and Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind 
Goldsmith — the stair on which the poor women sat weeping 
bitterty when the}' heard that the greatest and most generous 
of all men was dead within the black oak door.f Ah, it was a 

tieman. Mr. Mickle, the translator of the ' Lusiad/ and I, went to visit him 
at this place a few day afterwards. He was not at home ; but having a 
curiosity to see his apartment, we went in, and found curious scraps of 
descriptions of animals scrawled upon tlic wall with a blacklead pencil." 

— BOSWELL. 

* " When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, * Your pulse 
is in greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which you 
have; is your mind at ease? ' Goldsmith answered it was not/' — Dr. 
Johnson {in Boswell). 

" Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone much 
further. He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of dis- 
tress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of ac- 
quisition and folly of expense. But let not his failings be remembered ; 
he was a very great man," — Dr. Johnson to Boswell, July bth, 1774. 

t " When Burke was told [of Goldsmith's death] he burst into tears. 
Reynolds was in his painting-room when the messenger went to him ; but 



292 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

different lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when 
he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of 
all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn — 

" Here, as I take my solitary rounds, 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, 
And, many a year elapsed, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 
Remembrance wakes, w ith all her busy train,^ 
Swells at ray breast, and turns the past to pain. 

*' In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose ; 
I still had hopes — for pride attends us still — 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 
Around my fire an evening group to draw. 
And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; 
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue. 
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew — 
I still had hopes — my long vexations past, 
Here to return, and die at home at last. 

" O blest retirement, friend to life's decline! 
Retreats from care that never must be mine — 
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, 
A youth of labor with an age of ease ; 
Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches born to work and weep 
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep ; 
No surly porter stands in guilty state 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate : 
But on he moves to meet his latter end, 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; 
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay. 
Whilst resignation gently slopes the way ; 
And all his prospects brightening to the last, 
His heaven commences ere the world be past." 



at once he laid his pencil aside, which in times of great family distress he 
liad not been known to do, left his painting-room, and did not re-enter ic 

that day 

" The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with mourners, 
the reverse of domestic ; women witliout a home, without domesticity of 
any kind, with no friend but him they had come to weep for ; outcasts of 
that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom he had never f orgotton to be kind 
and charitable. And he had domestic mourners, too. His coffin was re- 
opened at the request of Miss Horneck and her sister (such was the regard 
lie was known to have for them !) that a lock might be cut from his hair. 
It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she died, after nearly seventy 
years." — Forster's Goldsmith. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 293 

In these verses, I need not sa}^ with what melod}^, with what 
touching truth, with what exquisite beauty of comparison — as 
indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this honest 
soul — the wliole character of the man is told — his humble 
confession of faults and weakness ; his pleasant little vanity, 
and desire that his village should admire him ; his simple 
scheme of good in which ever3'body was to be happy — no beg- 
gar was to be refused his dinner — nobod^^ in fact was to work 
much, and he to be the harmless chief of the Utopia, and the 
monarch of the Irish Yvetot. He would have told again, and 
without fear of their failing, those famous jokes * which had hung 

* " Goldsmith's incessant desire of being conspicuous in company was 
tlie occasion of his sometimes appearing to sucli disadvantage, as one siiould 
hardly have supposed possible in a man of liis genius. When Ids literary 
reputation had risen deservedly high, and his society was much courted, he 
became very jealous of the extraordinary attention which was everywhere 
paid to Jolinson. One evening, in a circle of wits, he found fault with me 
for talking of Johnson as entitled to the honor of unquestionable superior- 
ity. ' Sir,' said he, 'you are for making a monarchy of what should be a 
republic' 

" He was still more mortified, when, talking in a company with fluent 
vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all present, a 
German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself as if 
about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ' Stay, stay — Toctor Shon- 
son is going to zay zomething.' This was no doubt very provoking, espe^ 
cially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently mentioned it with 
strong expressions of indignation. 

" It may also be observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be 
treated with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential 
and important. An instance of this occurred in a small particular. John- 
son had a way of contracting the names of his friends, as Beauclerk, Beau ; 
Boswell, Bozzy I remember one day, when Tom Davies was tell- 
ing that Dr. Johnson said — ' We are all in labor for a name to Goldtj's 
play,' Goldsmith seemed displeased that such a liberty should be taken with 
his name, and said, ' I have often desired him not to call me Goldif.' " 

This is one of several of Boswell's depreciatory mentions of Goldsmith -v 
which may well irritate biographers and admirers — and also those who 
take that more kindly and more profound view of Boswell's own character, 
which was opened up by Mr. Carljde's famous article on his book. No 
wonder that Mr. Irving calls Boswell " an incarnation of toadyism." And 
the worst of it is, that Johnson himself has suffered from this habit of 
the Laird of Auchinleck's. People are apt to forget under what Boswellian 
stimulus the great Doctor uttered many hasty things : — things no more in- 
dicative of the nature of the depths of his character than the phosphoric 
gleaming of the sea, when struck at night, is indicative of radical corrup- 
tion of nature ! In truth, it is clear enough on the whole that both Johnson 
and Goldsmith appreciated each other, and that they mutually knew it. 
They were — as it were, tripped up and flung against each other, occasion- 
ally, by the blundering and silly gambolling of people in company. 

Something must be allowed for Boswell's " rivalry for Johnson's good 
graces " with Oliver (as Sir Walter Scott has remarked), for OUver was in- 



294 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

fire in London ; he would have talked of his great friends of 
the Club — of my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, mj'' Lord 
Nugent — sure he knew them intimately, and was hand and 
glove with some of the best men in town — and he would have 
spoken of Johnson and of Burke, and of Sir Joshua who had 
painted him — and he would have told wonderful sly stories of 
Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Madame 
Cornelis' ; and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessaniy 
Bride — the lovely Mar}- Horneck. 

The figure of that charming 3'oung lady forms one of the 
prettiest recollections of Goldsmith's life. She and her beau- 
tiful sister, who married Bunbur}", the graceful and humorous 
amateur artist of those days^ when Gilray had but just begun 
to try his powers, were among the kindest and dearest of Gold- 
smith's man}' friends, cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad 
with him, made him welcome at their home, and gave him many 
a pleasant holida}'. He bought his finest clothes to figure at; 
their country-house at Barton — he wrote them droll verses. 
The}' loved him, laughed at him, pla3'ed him tricks and made 
him happy. He asked for a loan from Garrick, and Garrick 
kindly supplied him, to enable him to go to Barton : but there 
were to be no more holidays, and only one brief struggle more 
for poor Goldsmith. A lock of his hair was taken from the 
coflfin and given to the Jessamy Bride. She lived quite into 
our time. Hazlitt saw her an old ladv, but beautiful still, 
in Northcote's painting-room, who told the eager critic how 
proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her. The 
younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of him. Vol. i. 
63, 64. 

" I was only five ye&Ys old," he sa3's, " when Goldsmith 
took me on his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee 
with my father, and began to pla}' with me, which amiable act 
I returned, with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, b}^ giving 
him a very smart slap on the face : it must have been a tingler, 
for it left the marks of m}' spiteful paw on his cheek. This 
infantile outrage was followed by summar}^ justice, and I was 
locked up by m}^ indignant father in an adjoining room to 

timate with the Doctor before his biographer was, — and, as we all remem- 
ber, marched off with him to " take tea with Mrs. WilUams " befoi'e Bos- 
well liad advanced to that honorable degree of intimacy. But, in truth, 
Boswell — though he perhaps showed more talent in his delineation of the 
Doctor than is generally ascribed to him — had not faculty to take a fair 
view of tivo great men at a time. Besides, as Mr. Forsier justly remarks, 
" he was impatient of Goldsmith from the first hour of their acquaintance." 
— Life and Adventures, p. 292. 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 295 

undergo colitar}' imprisonnient in the dark. Here I began to 
howl and scream most abominably-, which was no bad step 
towards my liberation, since those who were not inclined to 
pit}- me might be likely to set me free for the purpose of abating 
a nuisance. 

"At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me 
from jeopard}', and that generous friend was no other than the 
man I had so wantonly molested by assault and battery — it 
was the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle 
in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still 
partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and 
sobbed as he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. 
Goldsmith seized the propitious moment of returning good- 
humor, when he put down the candle and began to conjure. 
He placed three hats, which happened to be in the room, and 
a shilling under each. The shillings he told me were England, 
France, and Spain. ' Hey Presto cockalorum ! ' cried the Doc- 
tor, and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had been dis- 
persed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found 
congi-egated under one. I was no politician at five years old, 
and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolu- 
tion which brought England, France, and Spain all under one 
crown ; but, as also I was no conjurer, it amazed me beyond 

measure From that time, whenever the Doctor came to 

visit my father, ' I plucked his gown to share the good, man's 
smile ; ' a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were alwa3'S 
cordial friends and merry playfellow^s. Our unequal compan- 
ionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older ; but it 
did not last long : mj^ senior playmate died in his forty-fifth 
year, when I had attained m}^ eleventh. .... In all the 
numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and 
absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, 
his ' compassion for another's woe ' was alwajs predominant ; 
and my trivial stor}- of his humoring a froward child weighs 
but as a feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence." 

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like — but 
merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pit}'. He passes 
out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. 
Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave ; think of 
the noble spirits that admired and deplored him ; think of the 
righteous pen that wrote his epitaph — and of the wonderful 
and unanimous res})onse of affection with which the world has 
paid back the love he gave it. His humor delighting us still : 
his song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it ; 



296 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

his words in all our mouths : his very weaknesses beloved and 
familiar — his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us : 
to do gentle kindnesses : to succor with sweet charity : to 
soothe, caress, and forgive: to plead with the fortunate for 
the unhappy and the poor. 

His name is the last in the list of those men of humor who 
have formed the themes of the discourses which you have heard 
so kindl}'. 

Long before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or 
dreamed of the possibility of the good fortune which has brought 
me so many friends, I was at issue with some of my literary breth- 
ren upon a point — which they held from tradition I think rather 
than experience — that our profession was neglected in this 
country ; and that men of letters were ill-received and held in 
slight esteem. It would hardly be grateful of me now to alter 
ni}^ old opinion that we do meet with good-will and kindness, with 
generous helping hands in the time of our necessity, with cordial 
and friendly recognition. What claim had any one of these 
of whom I have been speaking, but genius ? What return of 
gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all? 

W^hat punishment befell those who were unfortunate among 
them, but that which follows reckless habits and careless lives? 
For these faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal that 
ever ran in debt. He must pa}^ the tailor if he wears the coat ; 
his children must go in rags if he spends his money at the tav- 
ern ; he can't come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if 
he stops on the road and gambles awa}^ his last shilling at 
Dublin. And he must pay the social penalty of these follies 
too, and expect that the world will shun the man of bad habits, 
that women will avoid the man of loose life, that prudent folks 
will close their doors as a precaution, and before a demand 
should be made on their pockets by the need}' prodigal. With 
what difficult}" had any one of these men to contend, save that 
eternal and mechanical one of want of means and lack of capi- 
tal, and of which thousands of young lawyers, young doctors, 
young soldiers and sailors, of inventors, manufacturers, shop- 
keepers, have to complain? Hearts as brave and resolute as 
ever beat in the breast of any wit or poet, sicken and break 
daily in the vain endeavor and unavailing struggle against life's 
difficulty. Don't we see daily ruined inventors, gray-haired 
midshipmen, balked heroes, blighted curates, barristers pining 
a hungry life out in chambers, the attorneys never mounting to 
their gaiTets, whilst scores of them are rapping at the door of the 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 297 

successful quack below ? If these suffer, who is the author, that 
he should be exempt ? Let us bear our ills with the same con- 
stancj' with which others endure them, accept our manly part 
in life, hold our own, and ask no more. I can conceive of no 
kings or laws causing or curing Goldsmith's improvidence, or 
Fielding's fatal love of pleasure, or Dick Steele's mania for 
running races with the constable. You never can outrun that 
sure-footed officer — not by any swiftness or bj^ dodges devised 
by any genius, however great ; and he carries off the Tatler to 
the spunging-house, or taps the Citizen of the World on the 
shoulder as he would any other mortal. 

Does society look down on a man because he is an author? 
I suppose if people want a buffoon the}^ tolerate him onl3^ in 
so far as he is amusing ; it can hardly be expected that they 
should respect him as an equal. Is there to be a guard of 
honor provided for the author of the last new novel or poem ? 
how long is he to reign, and keep other potentates out of pos- 
session? He retires, grumbles, and prints a lamentation that 
literature is despised. If Captain A. is left out of Lady B.'s 
parties he does not state that the arm}' is despised : if Lord C. 
no longer asks Counsellor D. to dinner, Counsellor D. does 
not announce that the bar is insulted. He is not fair to society 
if he enters it with this suspicion hankering about him ; if he 
is doubtful about his reception, how hold up his head honestl}', 
and look franklj- in the face that world about which he is 
full of suspicion? Is he place-hunting, and thinking in his 
mind that he ought to be made an Ambassador, like Prior, or 
a Secretary of State, like Addison? his pretence of equality 
falls to the ground at once : he is scheming for a patron, not 
shaking the hand of a friend, when he meets the world. Treat 
such a man as he deserves ; laugh at his buffoonery, and give 
him a dinner and a hon jour ; laugh at his self-sufficiency and 
absurd assumptions of superiorit}', and his equally ludicrous 
airs of martyrdom : laugh at his flattery and his scheming, and 
buy it, if it's worth the having. Let the wag have his dinner 
and the hireling his pay if 3'ou want him, and make a profound 
bow to the grand homme incompris^ and the boisterous mart3T, 
and show him the door. The great world, the great aggregate 
experience, has its good sense as it has its good humor. It 
detects a pretender, as it trusts a loyal heart. It is kind in 
the main : how should it be otherwise than kind, when it is so 
wise and clear-headed? To any literary man who saj'S, "It 
despises m}^ profession," I say, with all my might — no, no, no. 
It ma}' pass over your individual case — how many a brave 



298 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 

fellow has failed in the race, and perished unknown in the 
struggle ! — but it treats you as you merit in the main. If 3'ou 
serve it, it is not unthankful ; if 3^ou please, it is pleased ; if 3'our 
cringe to it, it detects 3'Ou, and scorns 3'ou if you are mean ; 
it returns 3^our cheerfulness with its good humor ; it deals not 
ungenerously with 3'our weaknesses ; it recognizes most kindl3^ 
your merits ; it gives you a fair place and fair pla3\ To 
any one of those men of whom we have spoken was it in the 
main ungrateful? A king might refuse Goldsmith a pension, 
as a publisher might keep his masterpiece and the delight of 
all the world in his desk for two years ; but it was mistake, 
and not ill-will. Noble and illustrious names of Swift, and 
Pope, and Addison ! dear and honored memories of Gold- 
smith and Fielding ! kind friends, teachers, benefactors ! who 
shall say that our country, which continues to bring you such 
an unceasing tribute of applause, admiration, love, sympathy, 
does not do honor to the literary calling in the honor which 
it bestows upon you ! 



SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 



IN LONDON. 



SKETCHES AND TRAVELS IN LONDON. 



MR. BROWN'S LETTERS TO HIS NEPHEW. 

It is with the greatest satistaction, my dear Robert, that 
I have you as a neighbor, within a couple of miles of me, and 
that I have seen you established comfortably in your chambers 
in Fig-tree Court. The situation is not cheerful, it is true ; 
and to clamber up three pairs of black creaking stairs is an 
exercise not pleasant to a man who never cared for ascending 
mountains. Nor did the performance of the young barrister 
who lives under you — and, it appears, plays prett}' constantly' 
upon the French horn — give me any great pleasure as I sat 
and partook of luncheon in your rooms. Your female attend- 
ant or laundress, too, struck me from her personal appearance 
to be a lad}^ addicted to the use of ardent spirits ; and the smell 
of tobacco, which you sa}^ some old college friends of yours had 
partaken on the night previous, was, I must say, not pleasant in 
the chambers, and 1 even thought might be remarked as lin- 
gering in your own morning-coat. However, I am an old 
fellow. The use of cigars has come in since my time (and, I 
must own, is adopted by man}' people of the first fashion), 
and tliese and other inconveniences are surmounted more gayly 
by .young fellows like yourself than b}' oldsters of my standing. 
It pleased me, however, to see the picture of the old house at 
home over the mantel-piece. Your college prize-books make 
a ver}^ good show in your bookcases ; and I was glad to remark 
in the looking-glass the cards of both our excellent county 
Members. The rooms, altogether, have a reputable appear- 
ance ; and I hope, my dear fellow, that the Society of the 
Inner Temple will have a punctual tenant. 

As you have now completed 3'our academical studies, and 



302 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

are about to commence your career in London, I propose, 
mj' dear Nephew, to give 3"Ou a few hints for 3'our guidance ; 
which, although 3'ou have an undoubted genius of 3'our own, 
3'et come from a person who has had considerable personal 
experience, and, I have no doubt, would be useful to 3'ou if 
3'ou did not disregard them, as, indeed, 3'OU will most proba- 
bl3' do. 

With 3'our law studies it is not m3' duty to meddle. I have 
seen 3^ou established, one of six pupils, in Mr. Tapeworm's cham- 
bers in Pump Court, seated on a high-legged stool on a foggv 
da3', with 3'our back to a blazing fire. At 3'our father's desire, 
I have paid a hundred guineas to that eminent special pleader, 
for the advantages which I have no doubt you will enjo3', while 
seated on the high-legged stool in his back room, and rest 
contented with 3^our mother's prediction that you will be Lord 
Chief Justice some day. Ma3' 3-ou prosper, m3^ dear fellow ! 
is all I desire. B3^ the wa3', I should like to know what was 
the meaning of a pot of porter w^hicli entered into your cham- 
bers as I issued from them at one o'clock, and trust that it 
was not your thirst which was to be quenched with such a 
beverage at such an hour. 

It is not, then, with regard to 3^our duties as a law-student 
that I have a desire to lecture you, but in respect of vour pleas- 
ures, amusements, acquaintances, and general conduct and bear- 
ing as a 3'oung man of the world. 

I will rush into the subject at once, and exemplif3' m3' moral- 
it3'' in 3'Our own person. Why, sir, for instance, do you wear 
that tuft to 3^our chin, and those sham turquoise buttons to 
3^our waistcoat ! A chin-tuft is a cheap enjoyment certainl3', 
and the twiddling it about, as I see you do constantl3', so as 
to show 3^our lower teeth, a harmless amusement to fill up 3'our 
vacuous hours. And as for waistcoat-buttons, 3'ou will say, 
"Do not all the young men wear them, and what can I do 
but buy artificial turquoise, as I cannot afford to bu3'' real 
stones ? " 

I take 3"ou up at once and show 3'ou wh3^ 3'ou ought to shave 
off 3^our tip and give up the factitious jeweller3^ M3' dear Bob, 
in spite of us and all the Republicans in the world, there are 
ranks and degrees in life and society, and distinctions to be 
maintained b3^ each man according to his rank and degree. 
You have no more right, as I take it, to sport an imperial on 
your chin than I have to wear a shovel-hat with a rosette. 
I hold a tuft to a man's chin to be the centre of a S3'stem, so 
to speak, which ought all to correspond and be harmonious — 



m LONDON. 303 

the whole tune of a man's life ought to be played in that 
key. 

Look, for instance, at Lord Hugo Fitzsurse seated in the 
private box at the Lj'ceum, b}^ the side of that beautiful crea- 
ture with the black eyes and the magnificent point-lace, who 
3'ou fancied was ogling you through her enormous spy-glasses. 
Lord Hugo has a tuft to his chin, certainly, his countenance 
grins with a perfect vacuitj^ behind it, and his whiskers curl 
crispl}' round one of the handsomest and stupidest coun- 
tenances in the world. 

But just reckon up in 3'^our own mind what it costs him to 
keep up that simple ornament on his chin. Look at ever}'- 
article of that amiable and most gentleman-hke — though, I 
own, foolish — young man's dress, and see how absurd it is 
of you to attempt to imitate him. Look at his hands (I have 
the 3'oung nobleman perfectl}' before my mind's e3'e now) ; the 
little hands are dangling over the cusliion of the box gloved 
as tightl3' and delicate I3' as a ladv's. His wristbands are fas- 
tened up towards his elbows with jeweller3'. Gems and rubies 
meander down his pink shirt-front and waistcoat. He wears 
a watch with an apparatus of gimcracks at his waistcoat- 
pocket. He sits in a splendid side-box, or he simpers out 
of the windows at "White's," or you see him grinning out 
of a cab b3^ the Serpentine — a lovely and costl3' picture, sur- 
rounded b3' a costty frame. 

Whereas you and I, m3^ good Bob, if we want to see a play, 
do not disdain an order from our friend the newspaper Editor, 
or to take a seat in the pit. Your watch is 3^our father's old hunt- 
ing-watch. When we go in the Park we go on foot, or at best 
get a horse up after Easter, and just show in Rotten Row. 
We shall never look out of "White's" bow- window. The 
amount of Lord Hugo's tailor's bill would support 3'^ou and 
3^our 3^ounger brother. His valet has as good an allowance 
as 3'ou, besides his perquisites of old clothes. You cannot 
afford to wear a dandv lord's cast-off old clothes, neither to 
imitate those which he wears. 

There is nothing disagreeable to me in the notion of a dand3^ 
an3^ more than there is in the idea of a peacock, or a camelopard, 
or a prodigious gaudy tulip, or an astonishing^ bright brocade. 
There are all sorts of animals, plants, and stuffs in Nature, from 
peacocks to tom-tits, and from cloth-of-gold to cordur03^, whereof 
the variety is assuredly intended b3' Nature, and certainl3^ adds 
to the zest of life. Therefore, I do not sa3' that Lord Hugo 
is a useless being, or bestow the least contempt upon him. 



304 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

Nay, it is right gratifj^ing and natural that he should be, and 
be as he is — handsome and graceful, splendid and perfumed, 
beautiful — whiskered and emptj^-headed, a sumptuous dandy 
and man of fashion — and what you young men have denomi- 
nated "A Swell." 

But a cheap Swell, my dear Robert (and that little chin 
ornament as well as certain other indications which I have 
remarked in 3'our simple nature, lead me to insist upon this 
matter rather strongl}' with you) , is by no means a pleasing 
object for our observation, although he is presented to us so 
frequenth'. Tr}^ my boy, and curb an}' little propensit}" which 
3'ou may have to dresses that are too splendid for 3'our station. 
You do not want light kid-gloves and wristbands up to 3'our 
elbows, cop3'ing out Mr. Tapeworm's Pleas and Declarations ; 
3'ou will only blot them with law3'ers' ink over 3'our desk, 
and they will impede 3'Our writing : whereas Lord Hugo may 
decorate his hands in an3'^ wa3^ he likes, because he has little 
else to do with them but to drive cabs, or applaud dancing- 
girls' pirouettes, or to handle a knife and fork or a toothpick 
as becomes the position in life which he fills in so distinguished 
a manner. To be sure since the da3's of friend ^sop. Jack- 
daws have been held up to ridicule for wearing the plumes of 
birds to whom Nature has affixed more gaudy tails ; but as 
Folly is constantly reproducing itself, so must Satire, and our 
honest Mr. Punch has but to repeat to the men of our genera- 
tion the lessons taught by the good-natured Hunchback his 
predecessor. 

Shave off your tuft, then, my boy, and send it to the girl of 
your heart as a token, if 3^ou like : and I pray 3'ou abolish the 
jewellery, towards which I clearl3' see 3'ou have a propensit3'. 
As you have a plain dinner at home, served comfortabh' on a 
clean table-cloth, and not a grand service of half a dozen entrees., 
such as we get at our county Member's (and an uncommonl3^ 
good dinner it is too), so let 3'our dress be perfectl}- neat, 
polite, and cleanl3^ without an3^ attempts at splendor. Mag- 
nificence is the decency of the rich — but it cannot be purchased 
with half a guinea a day, which, when the rent of your chambers 
is paid, I take to be pretty nearly the amount of your worship's 
income. This point, I thought, was rather well illustrated the 
other da3^ in an otherwise sill3^ and sentimental book which I 
looked over at the Club, called the " Foggart3' Diamond" (or 
some such vulgar name). Somebod}' gives the hero, who is a 
j)oor fellow, a diamond pin : he is obliged to bu3' a new stock 
to set off the diamond, then a new waistcoat, to correspond 



IN LONDON. 305 

with the Gtock, then a new coat, because the old one is too 
shabby for the rest of his attire ; — finally, the poor devil is 
ruinecl by the diamond ornament, which he is forced to sell, as 
I would recommend you to sell your waistcoat studs, were they 
worth anything. 

But as 3'ou hsLxe a good figure and a gentlemanlike deport- 
ment, and as every 3'oung man likes to be well attired, and 
ought, for the sake of his own advantage and progress in life, 
to show himself to the best advantage, I shall take an early 
opportunity of addressing you on the subject of tailors and 
clothes, which at least merit a letter to themselves. 



ON TAILORING — AND TOILETS IN GENERAL. 

Our ancestors, mj^ dear Bob, have transmitted to you (as 
well as every member of our famih^) considerable charms of 
person and figure, of which fact, although you are of course 
perfectl}' aware, 3'et, and equalh" of course, you have no objec- 
tion to be reminded ; and with these facial and corporeal en- 
dowments, a few words respecting dress and tailoring may not 
be out of place : for nothing is trivial in life, and everything to 
the philosopher has a meaning. As in the old joke about a 
pudding which has two sides, namety an inside and an outside, 
so a coat or a hat has its inside as well as its outside ; I mean, 
that there is in a man's exterior appearance the consequence of 
his inward ways of thought, and a gentleman who dresses too 
grandly, or too absurdly, or too shabbily, has some oddity, or 
insanity, or meanness in his mind, whicli develops itself some- 
how outwardly in the fashion of his garments. 

No man has a right to despise his dress in this world. There 
is no use in flinging any honest chance whatever away. For 
instance, although a woman cannot be expected to know the 
particulars of a gentleman's dress, any more than we to be 
acquainted with the precise nomenclature or proper cut of the 
various articles which those dear creatures wear, yet to what 
lad}' in a society of strangers do we feel ourselves most naturally 
inclined to address ourselves ? — to her or those whose appear- 
ance pleases us ; not to the gaudy, over-dressed Dowager or 
Miss — nor to her whose clothes, though handsome, are put on 
in a slatternly manner, but to the person who looks neat, and 
trim, and elegant, and in whose person we fancy we see ex- 

20 



306 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

bibited indications of a natural taste, order, and proprietj*. 
If Miss Smith in a rumpled gown offends our eyesight, though 
we hear she is a 3'oung lady of great genius and considerable 
fortune, while Miss Jones in her trim and simple attire attracts 
our admiration ; so must women, on their side, be attracted or 
repelled by the appearance of gentlemen into whose company 
they fall. If 3'ou are a tiger in appearance, you ma}' naturalh" 
expect to frighten a delicate and timid female ; if 3'ou are a 
sloven, to offend her : and as to be well with women, consti- 
tutes one of the chiefest happinesses of life, the object of my 
worth}' Bob's special attention will naturally be, to neglect no 
precautions to win their favor. 

Yes : a good face, a good address, a good dress, are each 
so man}' points in the game of life, of which ever}' man of sense 
will avail himself. They help many a man more in his com- 
merce with society than learning or genius. It is hard often 
to bring the former into a drawing-room : it is often too lum- 
bering and unwieldy for any den but its own. And as a King 
Charles's spaniel can snooze before the fire, or frisk over the 
ottoman-cushions and on to the ladies' laps, when a Royal 
elephant would find a considerable difficulty in walking up the 
stairs, and subsequently in finding a seat ; so a good manner 
and appearance will introduce you into many a house, where 
you might knock in vain for admission, with all the learning of 
Porson in your trunk. 

It is not learning, it is not virtue, about which people inquire 
in society. It is manners. It no more profits me that my 
neighbor at table can construe Sanscrit and say the " Encyclo- 
paedia " by heart, than that he should possess half a million in 
the Bank (unless, indeed, he gives dinners ; when, for reasons 
obvious, one's estimation of him, or one's desire to please him, 
takes its rise in diflferent sources), or that the lady *7hom I 
hand down to dinner should be as virtuous as Cornelia or the 
late Mrs. Hannah More. What is wanted for the nonce is, 
that folks should be as agreeable as possible in conversation 
and demeanor ; so that good humor may be said to be one of 
the very best articles of dress one can wear in society ; the 
which to see exhibited in Lady X.'s honest face, let us say, is 
more pleasant to behold in a room than the glitter of Lady Z.'s 
best diamonds. And yet, in point of virtue, the latter is, no 
doubt, a perfect dragon. But virtue is a home quality : man- 
ners are the coat it wears when it goes abroad. 

Thus, then, my beloved Bob, I would have your dining-out 
suit handsome, neat, well-made, fitting you naturally and easily, 



m LONDON. 307 

and 3'et with a certain air of holida}- about it, which should 
mark its destination. It is not because they thought their 
appearance was much iraproA^ed b}' the ornament, that the 
ancient philosophers and topers decorated their old pates with 
flowers (no wreath, I know, would make some people's mugs 
beautiful ; and I confess, for my part, I would as lief we.ar a 
horse-collar or a cotton nightcap in society as a coronet of 
pol3'anthuses or a garland of hjacinths) : — it is not because 
a philosopher cares about dress that he wears it ; but he wears 
his best as a sign of a feast, as a bush is the sign of an inn. 
You ought to mark a festival as a red-letter day, and you put 
on your broad and spotless white waistcoat, your finest linen, 
your shiniest boots, as much as to sa}', "It is a feast; here 
I am, clean, smart, ready with a good appetite, determined to 
enjoy." 

You would not enjoy a feast if you came to it unshorn, in a 
draggle-tailed dressing-gown. You ought to be well dressed, 
and suitable to it. A ver}^ odd and wise man whom I once 
knew, and who had not (as far as one could outwardly judge) 
the least vanity about his personal appearance, used, I remem- 
ber, to make a point of wearing in large Assemblies a most 
splendid gold or crimson waistcoat. He seemed to consider 
himself in the light of a walking bouquet of flowers, or a mov- 
able chandelier. His waistcoat was a piece of furniture to 
decorate the rooms : as for any personal pride he took in the 
adornment, he had none : for the matter of that, he would have 
taken the garment oflf, and lent it to a waiter — but this Philoso- 
pher's maxim was, that dress should be handsome upon hand- 
some occasions — and I hope you will exhibit 3'our own taste 
upon such. You don't suppose that people who entertain 3'ou 
so hospitably have four-and-twent3" lights in the dining-room, 
and still and dr3^ champagne ever3' da3'? — or that m3' friend, 
Mrs. Perkins, puts her drawing-room door under her bed ever3' 
night, when there is no ball ? A young fellow must dress him- 
self, as the host and hostess dress themselves, in an extra 
manner for extra nights. Enjoy, my bo3^ in honest3^ and 
manliness, the goods of this life. I would no more have 3'ou 
refuse to take 3'our glass of wine, or to admire (alwa3's in 
honesty) a prett3^ girl, than dislike the smell of a rose, or turn 
away 3'our e3'es from a landscape. '-'• Neque tu choreas sperne^ 
puer^"" as the dear old Heathen sa3'S : and, in order to dance, 
3'ou must have proper pumps willing to spring and whirl lightl3', 
and a clean pair of gloves, with which 3'ou can take your part- 
ner's pretty little hand. 



308 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

As for particularizing your dress, that were a task quite ab- 
surd and impertinent, considering that you are to wear it, and 
not I, and remembering the variations of fashion. When I was 
presented to H. R. H. the Prince Regent, in the uniform of the 
Hammersmith Hussars, viz. a yellow jacket, pink pantaloons, 
and silver lace, green morocco boots, and a light blue pelisse 
lined with ermine, the august Prince himself, the model of grace 
and elegance in his time, wore a coat of which the waist-buttons 
were placed between his royal shoulder-blades, and which, if 
worn by a man now, would cause the bo3S to hoot him in 
Pall Mall, and be a uniform for Bedlam. If buttons continue 
their present downward progress, a man's waist may fall down 
to his heels next year, or work upwards to the nape of his neck 
after another revolution : who knows ? Be it yours decently to 
conform to the custom, and leave 3^our buttons in the hands of 
a good tailor, who will place them wherever fashion ordains. 
A few general rules, however, may be gently hinted to a young 
fellow who has perhaps a propensity to fall into certain errors. 

Eschew violent sporting-dresses, such as one sees but too 
often in the parks and public pl-aces on the backs of misguided 
young men. There is no objection to an ostler wearing a par- 
ticular costume, but it is a pity that a gentleman should imitate 
it. I have seen in like manner young fellows at Cowes attired 
like the pictures we have of smugglers, buccaneers, and mari- 
ners, in Adelphi melodramas. I would Uke my Bob to remem- 
ber, that his business in life is neither to handle a cunycomb 
nor a marlin-spike, and to fashion his habit accordingly. 

If 3'our hair or clothes do not smell of tobacco, as the}'' 
sometimes, it must be confessed, do, you will not be less popu- 
lar among ladies. And as no man is worth a fig, or can have 
real benevolence of character, or observe mankind properly, 
who does not like the society of modest and well-bred women, 
respect their prejudices in this matter, and if 3'ou must smoke, 
smoke in an old coat, and away from the ladies. 

AA'oid dressing-gowns ; which argue dawdling, an unshorn 
chin, a lax toilet, and a general lazy and indolent habit at home. 
Begin 3'our da}" with a clean conscience in every wa3'. Clean- 
liness is honest3'.* A man who shows but a clean face and 
hands is a rogue and hvpocrite in societ3', and takes credit for 

* Note to the beloved Reader. — This hint, dear Sir, is of course not in- 
tended to apply personally to yon, who are scrupulously neat in your per- 
son ; but when you look around you and see how many people neglect the 
use of that admirable cosmetic, cold water, you will see that a few words 
in its praise may be spoken with advantage. 



IN LONDON. 309 

a virtue which he does not possess. And of all the advances 
towards civilization which our nation has made, and of most of 
which Mr. Macaulay treats so eloquently in his lately published 
History, as in his lecture to the Glasgow Students the other 
da}', there is none which ought to give a philanthropist more 
pleasure than to remark the great and increasing demand for 
bath-tubs at the ironmongers' : Zinc-Institutions, of which our 
ancestors had a lamentable ignorance. 

And I hope that these institutions will be universal in our 
country before long, and that every decent man in England 
will be a Companion of the Most Honorable order of the 
Bath. 



THE INFLUENCE OF LOVELY WOMAN UPON SOCIETY. 

Constantly, my dear Bob, I have told 3'ou how refining is 
the influence of women upon society, and how profound our 
respect ought to be for them. Living in chambers as you do, 
my dear Nephew, and not of course liable to be amused b}' 
the constant society of an old uncle, who moreover might be 
deucedl}' bored with your own conversation — I beseech and 
implore 3^ou to make a point of being intimate with one or two 
families where j^ou can see kind and well-bred English ladies. 
I have seen women of all nations in the world, but I never saw 
the equals of Enghsh women (meaning of course to include our 
cousins the MacWhirters of Glasgow, and the O'Tooles of 
Cork) : and I pray sincerely, my boy, that you may always 
have a woman for a friend. 

Try, then, and make j^ourself the hienvenu in some house 
where accomplished and amiable ladies are. Pass as much of 
3^our time as you can with them. Lose no opportunit}' of mak- 
ing yourself agreeable to them : run their errands ; send them 
flowers and elegant little tokens ; show a wilHngness to be 
pleased bj^ their attentions, and to aid their little charming 
schemes of shopping or dancing, or this, or that. I say to 
you, make yourself a lady's man as much as ever you can. 

It is better for ^o\x to pass an evening once or twice a week 
in a lady's drawing-room, even though the conversation is 
rather slow and you know the girls' songs b}- heart, than in 
a club, tavern, or smoking-room, or a pit of a theatre. All 
amusements of youth, to which virtuous women are not ad- 



310 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

mitted, are, rel}' on it, deleterious in their nature. All men 
who avoid female society, have dull perceptions and are stupid, 
or have gross tastes and revolt against what is pure. Your 
Clubswaggerers who are sucking the butts of billiard cues all 
night call female society insipid. Sir, poetr}' is insipid to a 
3okel ; beaut}^ has no charms for a blind man : music does not 
please an unfortunate brute who does not know one tune from 
another — and, as a true epicure is hardl}' ever tired of water- 
so uch}' and brown bread and butter, I protest I can sit for a 
whole night talking to a well-regulated kindl}' wom.an about her 
girl coming out, or her boy at Eton, and like the evening's 
entertainment. 

One of the great benefits a 3'oung man may derive from 
women's society is, that he is bound to be respectful to them. 
The habit is of great good to j'our moral man, depend on it. 
Our education makes of us the most eminentl}^ selfish men in 
the world. We fight for ourselves, we push for ourselves ; we 
cut the best slices out of the joint at club-dinners for ourselves ; 
we yawn for ourselves and light our pipes, and say we won't go 
out : we prefer ourselves and our ease — and the greatest good 
that comes to a man from woman's societ}' is, that he has to 
think of somebod}' besides himself — somebod}' to whom he is 
bound to be constantlj' attentive and respectful. Certainl}' I 
don't want m}' dear Bob to associate with those of the other 
sex whom he doesn't and can't respect : that is worse than 
billiards : worse than tavern brandv-and-water : worse than 
smoking selfishness at home. But I vow I would rather see 
jo\x turning over the leaves of Miss Fiddlecombe's music-book 
all night, than at billiards, or smoking, or brandj'-and-water, or 
all three. 

Remember, if a house is pleasant, and you like to remain in 
it, that to be well with the women of the house is the great, 
the vital point. If it is a good house, don't turn up your nose 
because 3'ou are onlj- asked to come in the evening while others 
are invited to dine. Recollect the debts of dinners which a 
hospitable familj^ has to pay ; who are you that 3'ou should 
alwa3's be expecting to nestle under the mahogany ? Agreeable 
acquaintances are made just as well in the drawing-room as in 
the dining-room. Go to tea brisk and good-humored. Be 
determined to be pleased. Talk to a dowager, take a hand at 
whist. If 3'Ou are musical, and know a song, sing it like a 
man. Never sulk about dancing, but ofi* with 3'Ou. You will 
find 3'our acquaintance enlarge. Mothers, pleased with your 
good-humor, will probablj' ask you to Pocklington Square, to a 



IN LONDON. 311 

little party. You will get on — you will form yourself a circle. 
You may marrj^ a rich girl, or, at any rate, get the chance of 
seeing a number of the kind and the pretty. 

Many young men, who are more remarkable for their impu- 
dence and selfishness than their good sense, are fond of boast- 
fully announcing that they decline going to evening-parties at 
all, unless, indeed, such entertainments commence with a good 
dinner, and a quantity of claret. 

I never saw my beautiful-minded friend, Mrs. Y. Z., many 
times out of temper, but can quite pardon her indignation when 
young Fred Noodle, to whom the Y. Z.'s have been very kind, 
and who has appeared scores of times at their elegant table in 
Up — r B-k-r Street, announced in an unlucky moment of flip- 
pancy, that he did not intend to go to evening-parties any 
more. 

What induced Fred Noodle to utter this bravado I know 
not ; whether it was that he has been puffed up by attentions 
from several Aldermen's families with whom he has of late 
become acquainted, and among whom he gives himself the airs 
of a prodigious "swell;" but having made this speech one 
Sunday after Church, when he condescended to call in B-k-r 
Street, and show off his new gloves and waistcoat, and talked 
in a sufficiently dandified air about the opera (the wretched 
creature fancies that an eight-and-sixpenny pit ticket gives him 
the privileges of a man of fashion) — Noodle made his bow to 
the ladies, and strutted off to show his new vellow kids else- 
where. 

"Matilda, my love, bring the Address Book," Mrs. Y. Z. 
said to her lovely eldest daughter as soon as Noodle was gone, 
and the banging hall-door had closed upon the absurd youth. 
That graceful and obedient girl rose, went to the back drawing- 
room, on a table in which apartment the volume lay, and brought 
the book to her mamma. 

Mrs. Y. Z. turned to the letter N ; and under that initial 
discovered the name of the young fellow who had just gone out. 
Noodle, F., 250, Jermyn Street, St. James's. She took a pen 
from the table before her, and with it deliberately crossed the 
name of Mr. Noodle out of her book. Matilda looked at Eliza, 
who stood by in silent awe. The sweet eldest girl, who has a 
kind feeling towards every soul alive, then looked towards her 
mother with expostulating e5^es, and said, "Oh, mamma!" 
Dear, dear Eliza ! I love all pitiful hearts like thine. 

But Mrs. Y. Z. was in no mood to be merciful, and gave 
way to a natural indignation and feeling of outraged justice. 



312 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

" What business has that young man to tell me," she ex- 
claimed, " that he declines going to evening-parties, when he 
knows that after Easter w^e have one or two? Has he not met 
with constant hospitalit}' here since Mr. Y. Z. brought him home 
from the Club ? Has he such beaux yeux ? or, has he so much 
wit? or, is he a man of so much note, that his companj' at a 
dinner-table becomes indispensable ? He is nobody ; he is not 
handsome ; he is not clever ; he never opens his mouth except 
to drink 3'our Papa's claret ; and he declines evening-parties 
forsooth ! — Mind, children, he is never invited into this house 
again." 

When Y. Z. now meets young Noodle at the Club, that kind, 
but feeble-minded old gentleman covers up his face with the 
newspaper, so as not to be seen b}^ Noodle ; or' sidles away 
with his face to the bookcases, and lurks off b}^ the door. The 
other da}', the}' met on the steps, when the wretched Noodle, 
driven aux abois, actually had the meanness to ask how Mrs. 
Y. Z. was? The Colonel (for such he is, and of the Bombay 
service, too) said, — " My wife? Oh ! — hum ! — I'm sorry to 
say Mrs. Y. Z. has been very poorly indeed, lately, very poorly ; 
and confined to her room. God bless my soul ! I've an ap- 
pointment at the India House, and it's past two o'clock" — 
and he fled. 

I had the malicious satisfaction of describing to Noodle the 
most sumptuous dinner which Y. Z. had given the day before, 
at which there was a Lord present, a Foreign Minister with his 
Orders, two Generals with Stars, and every luxury of the 
season ; but at the end of our conversation, seeing the effect it 
had upon the poor youth, and how miserably he was cast down, 
I told him the truth, viz., that the above story was a hoax, and 
that if he wanted to get into Mrs. Y. Z.'s good graces again, 
his best plan was to go to Lady Flack's party, where I knew 
the Miss Y. Z.'s would be, and dance with them all night. 

Yes, my dear Bob, you boys must pay with your persons, 
however lazy you may be — however much inclined to smoke 
at the Club, or to lie there and read the last delicious new 
novel ; or averse to going home to a dreadful black set of 
chambers, where there is no fire ; and at ten o'clock at night 
creeping shuddering into your ball suit, in order to go forth to 
an evening-party. 

The dressing, the clean gloves, and cab-hire are nuisances, 
I grant you. The idea of a party itself is a bore, but you must 
go. When you are at the party, it is not so stupid ; there is 
always something pleasant for the eye and attention of an 



IN LONDON. 313 

observant man. There is a bustling Dowager wheedling and 
manoeuvring to get proper partners for her girls ; there is a pretty 
girl enjoying herself with all her heart, and in all the pride of 
her beauty, than which I know no more charming object ; — 
there is poor Miss Meggot, lonelj^ up against the wall, whom 
nobod}^ asks to dance, and with whom it is j^our bounden duty 
to waltz. There is always something to see or do, when jou 
are there ; and to evening-parties, I say, 30U must go. 

Perhaps I speak with the ease of an old fellow who is out 
of the business, and beholds you from afar off. M3' dear boj^, 
the}'^ don't want us at evening-parties. A stout, bald-headed 
man dancing, is a melanchol}^ object to himself in the looking- 
glass opposite, and there are duties and pleasures of all ages. 
Once, heaven help us, and only once, upon m}- honor, and I 
say so as a gentleman, some boj's seized upon me and carried 
me to the Casino, where, forthwith, they found acquaintances 
and partners, and went whirling away in the double-timed waltz 
0t is an abominable dance to me — I am an old fog}^) along 
with hundreds more. I caught sight of a face in the crowd — 
the most blank, melancholy', and dreary- old visage it was — my 
own face in the glass — there was no use in mj^ being there. 
Canities adest morosa — no, not morosa — but, in fine, I had no 
business in the place, and so came away. 

I saw enough of that Casino, however, to show to me that 
— but my paper is full, and on the subject of women I have 
more things to say, which might fill many hundred more pages. 



SOME MORE WORDS ABOUT THE LADIES. 

Suffer me to continue, my dear Bob, our remarks about 
women, and their influence over you 3'oung fellows — an influ- 
ence so vast, for good or for evil. 

I have, as 3^ou prett}' well know, an immense sum of money 
in the Three per Cents, the possession of which does not, I 
think, decrease your respect for m}- character, and of which, 
at m}^ demise, you will possibly have 3'our share. But if I ever 
hear of you as a Casino haunter, as a frequenter of Races and 
Greenwich Fairs, and such amusements, in questionable com- 
pany, I give 3"ou m3^ honor J^ou shall benefit b3' no legacy of 
mine, and I will divide the portion that was, and is, I hope, to 
be yours, amongst 3'our sisters. 



314 SKETCHES AKD TRAVELS 

Think, sir, of what the}^ are, and of your mother at home, 
spotless and pious, loving and pure, and shape 3'our own course 
so as to be worth}* of them. AYould you do anj'thing to give 
them pain? Would you say an3*thing that should bring a blush 
to their fair cheeks, or shock their gentle natures? At the 
Royal Academy Exhibition last year, when that great stupid, 
dandified donke}^ Captain Grigg, in company with the other 
vulgar oaf, Mr. Gowker, ventured to stare, in rather an inso- 
lent manner, at 3'^our pretty little sister Fanny, who had come 
blushing from Miss Pinkerton's Academ}', I saw how your 
honest face flushed up with indignation, as 3'ou caught a sight of 
the hideous grins and ogles of those two ruffians in varnished 
boots; and your e3*es 'flashed out at them glances of defiance 
and warning so savage and terrible, that the discomfited wretches 
turned wisel3* upon their heels, and did not care to face such a 
resolute young champion as Bob Brown. What is it that makes 
all your lilood tingle, and fills all your heart with a vague and 
fierce desire to thrash somebod3', when the idea of the poss^ 
bihty of an insult to that fair creature enters your mind ? You 
can't bear to think that injury should be done to a being so 
sacred, so innocent, and so defenceless. You would do battle 
with a Goliath in her cause. Your sword would leap from its 
scabbard (that is, if 3^ou gentlemen from Pump Court wore 
swords and scabbards at the present period of time,) to avenge 
or defend her. 

Respect all beaut3% all innocence, my dear Bob ; defend all 
defencelessness in your sister, as in the sisters of other men. 
We have all heard the story of the Gentleman of the last 
centur3*, who, when a crowd of 3'oung bucks and bloods in the 
Crush-room of the Opera were laughing and elbowing an old 
lad3' there — an old lady, loneh^ ugl3', and unprotected — went 
up to her respectfull3* and ofljered her his arm, took her down 
to his own carriage which was in waiting, and walked home 
himself in the rain, — and twent3^ 3^ears afterwards had ten 
thousand a year left him b3^ this very old lad3*, as a reward for 
that one act of politeness. We have all heard that stor3^ ; nor 
do I think it is probable that you will have ten thousand a 
year left to 3'ou for being polite to a woman : but I sa3', be 
polite, at an3^ rate. Be respectful to ever}* woman. A manl}^ 
and generous heart can be no otherwise ; as a man would be 
gentle with a child, or take oflT his hat in a church. 

I would have 3*ou apply this principle universally towards 
women — from the finest lady of vour acquaintance down to the 
laundress who sets 3*our Chambers in order. It ma}- safely be 



IN LONDON. 315 

asserted that the persons who joke with servants or barmaids 
at lodgings are not men of a high intellectual or moral capacit3\ 
To chuck a still-room maid under the chin, or to send off Molly 
the cook grinning, are not, to say the least of them, dignified 
acts in an}' gentleman. The butcher-boy who brings the leg- 
of-mutton to Moll}^ may converse with her over the area-rail- 
ings ; or the youthful grocer ma}^ exchange a few jocular remarks 
with Betty at the door as he hands in to her the tea and sugar ; 
but not you. We must live according to our degree. I hint 
this to you, sir, b}^ the way, and because the other night, as I 
was standing on the drawing-room landing-place, taking leave 
of our friends Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax, after a very agreeable 
dinner, I heard a giggling in the hall, where you were putting 
on your coat, and where that uncommonly good-looking parlor- 
maid was opening the door. And here, whilst on this subject, 
and whilst Mrs. Betty is helping j^ou on with j^our coat, I would 
say, respecting 3'our commerce with friends' servants and 3^our 
own, be thankful to them, and they will be grateful to you in 
return, depend upon it. Let the young fellow who lives in 
lodgings respect the poor little maid who does the wondrous 
work of the house, and not send her on too many errands, or 
ply his bell needlessly : if you visit any of 3^our comrades in 
such circumstances, be 3'ou, too, respectful and kind in 3'our 
tone to the poor little Abigail. If 3'ou frequent houses, as I 
hope you will, where are man3' goocl fellows and amiable ladies 
who cannot afford to have their doors opened or their tables 
attended b3" men, pray be particularl3' courteous (though b3^ no 
means so marked in 3^our attentions as on the occasion of the 
dinner at Mr. Fairfax's to which I have just alluded) to the 
women-servants. Thank them when they serve you. Give 
them a half-crown now and then — na3^, as often as 3'our means 
will permit. Those small gratuities make but a small sum in 
3^our 3'ear's expenses, and it may be said that the practice of 
giving them never impoverished a man 3^et : and, on the other 
hand, the3' give a deal of innocent happiness to a ver3^ worth3^ 
active, kind set of folks. 

But let us hasten from the hall-door to the drawing-room, 
where Fortune has cast 3^our lot in life : I want to explain to 
3"0u wh3^ I am so anxious that 3'ou should devote 3'ourself to 
that amiable lad3^ who sits in it. Sir, I do not mean to tell 
3'ou that there are no women in the world vulgar and ill-humored, 
rancorous and narrow-minded, mean schemers, son-in-law hunt- 
ers, slaves of fashion, h3^pocrites ; but I do respect, admire, 
and almost worship good women ; and I think there is a very 



316 SKETCHES A^^D TRAVELS 

fair number of such to be found in this world, and I have no 
doubt, in every educated Englishman's circle of society, whether 
he finds that circle in palaces in Belgravia and Maj' Fair, in 
snug little suburban villas, in ancient comfortable old Blooms- 
bur}^, or in back parlors behind the shop. It has been my 
fortune to meet with excellent English ladies in ever}^ one of 
these places — wives graceful and affectionate, matrons tender 
and good, daughters liapp}^ and pure-minded, and I urge the 
society of such on you, because I defy you to think evil in their 
compan}^ Walk into the drawing-room of Lad}^ Z., that great 
lady : look at her charming face, and hear her voice. You 
know that she can't but be good, w-ith such a face and such a 
voice. She is one of those fortunate beings on whom it has 
pleased heaven to bestow all sorts of its most precious gifts and 
richest worldh' favors. With what grace she receives you; 
with what a frank kindness and natural sweetness and dignity ! 
Her looks, her motions, her words, her thoughts, all seem to 
be beautiful and harmonious quite. See her with her children, 
what woman can be more simple and loving? After 3'ou have 
talked to her for a while, you ver}' likely find that she is ten 
times as well read as 3'ou are : she has a hundred accomplish- 
ments which she is not in the least anxious to show ofl', and 
makes no more account of them than of her diamonds, or of the 
splendor round about her — to all of w^hich she is born, and has 
a happy, admirable claim of nature and possession — admirable 
and happy for her and for us too ; for is it not a happiness for 
us to admire her? Does anybody grudge her excellence to that 
paraoon ? Sir, we may be thankful to be admitted to contem- 
plate'^such consummate goodness and beauty : and as in looking 
at a fine landscape or a fine work of art, every generous heart 
must be delighted and improved, and ought to feel grateful 
afterwards, so one may feel charmed and thankful for having 
the opportunity of knowing an almost perfect woman. Madam, 
if the gout and the custom of the world permitted, I would 
kneel down and kiss the hem of your ladyship's robe. To see 
your gracious face is a comfort — to see you walk to your carriage 
is a holiday. Drive her faithfully, O thou silver-wigged coach- 
man ! drive to all sorts of splendors and honors and royal 
festivals. And for us, let us be glad that we should have the 
privilege to admire her. 

Now, transport yourself in spirit, my good Bob, into another 
drawino-room. Tliere sits an old lady of more than fourscore 
years, serene and kind, and as beautiful in her age now as in 
her youth, when History toasted her. What has she not seen, 



m LONDON. 317 

and what is she not read}- to tell ? All the fame and wit, all 
the rank and beaut}', of more than half a centur}', have passed 
through those rooms where you have the honor of making your 
best bow. She is as simple now as if she had never had any 
flatter}^ to dazzle her : she is never tired of being pleased and 
being kind. Can that have been anything but a good life which, 
after more than eighty years of it are spent, is so calm ? Could 
she look to the end of it so cheerfully, if its long course had not 
been pure? Respect her, I say, for being so happy, now that 
she is old. We do not know what goodness and charity, what 
affections, what trials, may have gone to make that charming 
sweetness of temper, and complete that perfect manner. But 
if we do not admire and reverence such an old age as that, 
and get good from contemplating it, what are we to respect and 
admire ? 

Or shall we walk through the shop (while N. is recommend- 
ing a tall copy to an amateur, or folding up a twopenn}- worth 
of letter-paper, and bowing to a poor customer in a jacket and 
apron with just as much respectful gravity as he would show 
while waiting upon a Duke,) and see Mrs. N. playing with the 
child in the back parlor until N. shall come in to tea? The}' 
drink tea at five o'clock ; and are actually as well bred as those 
gentlefolks who dine three hours later. Or will 30U please to 
step into Mrs. J.'s lodgings, who is waiting, and at work, until 
her husband comes home from Chambers? She blushes and 
puts the work awa}' on hearing the knock, but when she sees 
who the visitor is, she takes it with a smile from behind the sofa 
cushion, and behold, it is one of J.'s waistcoats, on which she 
is sewing buttons. She might have been a Countess blazing in 
diamonds, had Fate so willed it, and the higher her station the 
more she would have adorned it. But she looks as charming 
while plying her needle as the great lad}^ in the palace whose 
equal she is, — in beaut}^, in goodness, in high-bred grace and 
simplicit}"' ; at least, I can't fanc}^ h^r better, or any Peeress 
being more than her peer. 

And it is with this sort of people, mj- dear Bob, that I recom- 
mend you to consort, if you can be so luckv as to meet with their 
societ}^ — nor do I think you are ver}' likely to find manj' such 
at the Casino ; or in the dancing-booths of Greenwich Fair on 
this present Easter Monday. 



318 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 



ON FRIENDSHIP. 

Choice of friends, my dear Robert, is a point upon which 
every man about town should be instructed, as he should be 
careful. And as example, the}' sa}^, is sometimes better than 
precept, and at the risk even of appearing somewhat ludicrous 
in your eyes, I will narrate to 3''ou an adventure which happened 
to m3"self, which is at once ridiculous and melancholy (at least 
to me), and which will show you how a man, not imprudent or 
incautious of his own nature, ma}^ be made to suffer by the 
imprudent selection of a friend. Attend then, my dear Bob, to 
"the History of Rasselas, Prince of Ab^'ssinia." 

Sir, in the year 1810, I was a joll}^ young Bachelor, as j'ou 
are now (indeed, it was three 3'ears before I married 3'our poor 
dear Aunt) ; I had a place in the Tape and Sealing- Wax Office ; 
I had Chambers in Pump Court, au troisihne, and led a not 
uncomfortable life there. I was a free and gay 3'oung fellow in 
those da3's, (however much, sir, 3'ou ma3' doubt the assertion, 
and think that I am changed,) and not so particular in m3' 
choice of friends as subsequent experience has led me to be. 

There lived in the set of Chambers opposite to mine, a 
Suffolk gentleman, of good famil3', whom I shall call Mr. 
Bludyer. Our bo3's or clerks first made acquaintance, and did 
each other mutual kind offices : borrowing for their respective 
masters' benefit, neither of whom was too richh^ provided with 
the world's goods, coals, blacking-brushes, crocker3^-ware, and 
the like ; and our forks and spoons, if either of us had an en- 
tertainment in Chambers. As I learned presently that Mr. 
Bludyer had been educated at Oxford, and heard that his elder 
brother was a gentleman of good estate and reputation in his 
county, I could have no 'objection to make his acquaintance, 
and accepted finally his invitation to meet a large game-pie 
which he had brought with him from the country, and I recol- 
lect I lent my own silver teapot, which figured handsomely on 
the occasion. It is the same one which I presented to 3'ou, when 
3^ou took possession of 3^our present apartments. 

Mr. Blud3"er was a sporting man : it was the custom in those 
da3's with many gentlemen to dress as much like coachmen as 
possible : in top-boots, huge white coats with capes, Belcher 
neckerchiefs, and the like adornments ; and at the tables of 
bachelors of the ver3^ first fashion, 3'ou would meet with prize- 



m LONDON. 319 

fighters and jockeys, and hear a great deal about the prize-ring, 
the cock-pit, and the odds. I remember m}^ Lord Tilbur}' was 
present at this breakfast, (who afterwards lamentabl}^ broke his 
neck in a steeple-chase, b}' which the noble family became ex- 
tinct,) and for some time I confounded his lordship with Dutch 
Sam, who w^as also of the part}', and, indeed, not unlike the 
noble Viscount in dress and manner. 

My acquaintance with Mr. Bludyer ripened into a sort of 
friendship. He was perfectly good-natured, and not ill-bred ; 
and his jovial spirits and roaring stories amused a man who, 
though always of a peaceful turn, had no dislike to cheerful 
companions. We used to dine together at coffee-houses, for 
Clubs were scarcel}" invented in those days, except for the aris- 
tocracy ; and, in fine, were very intimate. Bludyer, a brave 
and athletic man, would often give a loose to his spirits of an 
evening, and mill a Charle}' or two, as the phrase then was. 
The .young bloods of those days thought it was no harm to spend 
a night in the watch-house, and I assure you it has accommo- 
dated a deal of good company. Autres temps, autres mceurs. 
In our own days, m}^ good Bob, a station-house bench is not 
the bed for a gentleman. 

I was at this time (and deservedly so, for I had been very 
kind to her, and ni}' elder brother, j^our father, neglected her 
considerably) the favorite nephew of your grand-aunt, vny aunt, 
Mrs. General MacWhirter, who was left a very handsome for- 
tune by the General, and to whom I do not scruple to confess 
I paid every attention to which her age, her sex, and her large 
income entitled her. I used to take sweetmeats to her poodle. 
I went and drank tea with her night after night. I accompa- 
nied her Sunday after Sunday to hear the Rev. Rowland Hill, 
at the Rotunda Chapel, over Blackfriars Bridge, and I used to 
read many of the tracts which she hberallj' supplied me — in 
fact, do ever^'thing to comfort and console a ladj' of peculiar 
opinions and habits who had a large jointure. Your father used 
to say I was a sneak, but he was then a boisterous 3'oung squire ; 
and, perhaps, we were not particularly good friends. 

Well, sir, my dear aunt, Mrs. General MacWhirter, made 
me her chief confidant. - 1 regulated "her money matters for her, 
and acted with her bankers and lawyers ; and as she alwa3's 
spoke of your father as a reprobate, I had every reason to sup- 
pose I should inherit the propert}-, the main part of which 
passed to another branch of the Browns. I do not grudge it, 
Bob : I do not gi'udge it. Your family is large ; and I have 
enough from my poor dear departed wife. 



320 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

Now it so happened that, in June, 1811, — I recollect the 
comet was blazing furiously at the time, and Mrs. MacWhirter 
was of opinion that the world was at air end — Mr. Bludj'er, 
who was having his chambers in Pump Court painted, asked 
permission to occup}^ mine, where he wished to give a lunch 
to some people whom he was desirous to entertain. Thinking 
no harm, of course I said 3'es ; and I went to my desk at 
the Tape and Sealing- Wax Office at my usual hour, giving 
instructions to my boy to make Mr. Bludyer's friends com- 
fortable. 

As ill-luck would have it, on that accursed Friday, Mrs. 
MacWhirter, who had never been up my staircase before in 
her life (for your dear grand-aunt was large in person, and the 
apoplexy which carried her off soon after menaced her always), 
having some very particular business with her solicitors in 
Middle Temple Lane, and being anxious to consult me about a 
mortgage, actually mounted my stairs, and opened the door on 
which she saw written the name of Mr. Thomas Brown. She 
was a peculiar woman, I have said, attached to glaring colors 
in her dress, and from her long residence in India, seldom 
without a set of costly Birds of Paradise in her bonnet, and 
a splendid Cashmere shawl. 

Fancy her astonishment then, on entering my apartments at 
three o'clock in the afternoon, to be assailed in the first place 
b}' a strong smell of tobacco-smoke which pervaded the passage, 
and by a wild and ferocious bull-dog which flew at her on 
entering my sitting-room. 

This bull-dog, sir, doubtless attracted by the brilliant colors 
of her costume, seized upon her, and pinned her down, scream- 
ina: so that her voice drowned that of Bludver himself, who 
was sitting on the table bellowing, " A Southerly Wind and a 
Cloudy Sky proclaim a Hunting Moiming^' — or some such ribald 
trash : and the brutal owner of the dog, (who was no other 
than the famous Mulatto boxer, Norroy, called the "Black 
Prince" in the odious language of the Fancy, and who was 
inebriated doubtless at the moment,) encouraged his dog in the 
assault upon this defenceless lad}^ and laughed at the agonies 
which she endured. 

Mr. Bludyer, the black man, and one or two more, were ar- 
ranging a fight on Moulsej^ Hurst, when my poor aunt made her 
appearance among these vulgar wretches. Although it was but 
three o'clock, they had sent to a neighboring tavern for gin- 
and- water, and the glasses sparkled on the board, — to use a 
verse from a Bacchanalian song which I well remember Mr. 



m LOKDOJ^. 321 

Blud3'er used to 3'ell forth — when I m3^self arrived from my 
office at m}' usual hour, half-past three. The black fellow and 
3 oung Captain Cavendish of the Guards were the smokers ; 
and it appears that at first all the gentlemen screamed with 
laughter ; some of them called m3' aunt an " old girl ; " and it 
was not until she had nearl3' fainted that the filth3^ Mulatto 
called the dog off from the flounce of her yellow gown of which 
he had hold. 

When this poor victim of vulgarity asked with a scream — 
Where was her nephew? new roars of laughter broke out 
from the coarse gin-drinkers. "It's the old woman whom 
he goes to meeting with," cried out Bludyer. "Come awa3', 
bo3^s ! " And he led his brutalized crew out of m3^ chambers 
into his own, where they finished, no doubt, their arrangements 
about the fight. 

Sir, when I came home at my usual hour of half-past three, 
I found Mrs. MacWhirter in hysterics upon m3' sofa — the 
pipes were l3ing about — the tin dish-covers — the cold kid- 
ne3"s — the tavern cruet-stands, and wretched remnants of the 
orgy were in disorder on the table-cloth, stained with beer. 
Seeing her fainting, I wildl3^ bade m3' boy to open the window, 
and seizing a glass of water which was on the table, I pre- 
sented it to her lips. — It was gin-and- water which I proflTered 
to that poor lad3\ 

She started up with a scream, which terrified me as I upset 
the glass : and with empurpled features, and a voice quivering 
and choking with anger, she vowed she would never forgive 
me. In vain I pleaded that I was ignorant of the whole of 
these disgraceful transactions. I went down on m3' knees to 
her, and begged her to be pacified ; I called my boy, and bade 
him bear witness to my innocence : the impudent young fiend 
burst out laughing in my face, and I kicked him down stairs as 
soon as she was gone : for go she did directly to her carriage, 
which was in waiting in Middle Temple Lane, and to which I 
followed her with tears in my eyes, amidst a crowd of jeering 
barristers' boys and Temple porters. But she pulled up the 
window in m\^ face, and would no more come back to me than 
Eurydice would to Orpheus. 

If I grow pathetic over this stor3^, my dear Bob, have I not 
reason? Your great-aunt left thirty thousand pounds to your 
famil3', and the remainder to the missionaries, and it is a curi- 
ous proof of the inconsistency of women, that she, a serious 
person, said on her death-bed that she would have left her 
money to me, if I had called out Mr. Bludyer, who insulted 

2X 



322 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

her, and with whom I certainl}' would have exchanged shots, 
had I thought that Mrs. MacWhirter would have encouraged 
any such murder. 

My wishes, dear Bob, are moderate. Your aunt left me a 
handsome competenc}^ — and, I repeat, I do not grudge my 
brother George the money. Nor is it probable that such a 
calamity can happen again to any one of our family — that 
would be too great misfortune. But I tell 3'ou the tale, because 
at least it shows jon how important good company is, and that 
a young man about town should beware of his friends as well 
as of his enemies. 

The other day I saw you walking by the Serpentine with 
young Lord Foozle, of the Windsor Heavies, who nodded to 
all sorts of suspicious broughams on the ride, while j'ou looked 
about (3'ou know you did, you young rascal) for acquaint- 
ances — as much as to sa}- — " See ! here am I, Bob Brown, of 
Pump Court, walking with a lord." 

My dear Bob, I own that to walk with a lord, and to be 
seen with him, is a pleasant thing. Every man of the middle 
class likes to know persons of rank. If he sa3's he don't — 
don't believe him. And I would certainly wish that you should 
associate with 3'our superiors rather than 3'our inferiors. There 
is no more dangerous or stupef3ing position for a man in life 
than to be a cock of small society. It prevents his ideas from 
growing : it renders him intolerabl3^ conceited. A twopenny 
halfpenn3' Caesar, a Brummagem dand3", a coterie philosopher 
or wit, is prett3^ sure to be an ass ; and, in fine, I set it down 
as a maxim that it is good for a man to live where he can meet 
his betters, intellectual and social. 

But if 3'ou fanc3" that getting into Lord Foozle's set will do 
you good or advance 3^our prospects in life, m3' dear Bob, 3'ou 
are wofulty mistaken. The Windsor Heavies are a most 
gentleman-like, well-made, and useful set of men. The con- 
versation of such of them as I have had the good fortune to 
meet, has not certainly inspired me with a respect for their 
intellectual qualities, nor is their life commonly of that kind 
which rigid ascetics would pronounce blameless. Some of the 
young men amongst them talk to the broughams, frequent the 
private boxes, dance at the Casinos; few read — man3^ talk 
about horseflesh and the odds after dinner, or relax with a little 
lansquenet or a little billiards at Pratt's. 

JNfy boy, it is not with the eye of a moralist that 3'our ven- 
erable old uncle examines these youths, but rather of a nat- 



IN LONDON. 323 

ural philosopher, who inspects them as he would any other 
phenomenon, or queer bird, or odd fish, or fine flower. These 
fellows are like the flowers, and neither toil nor spin, but 
are decked out in magnificent apparel : and for some wise 
and useful purpose no doubt. It is good that there should 
be honest, handsome, hard-living, hard-riding, stupid young 
Windsor Heavies — as that there should be polite young 
gentlemen in the Temple, or any other variety of our genus. 

And it is good that you should go from time to time to 
the Heavies' mess, if they ask you ; and know that worth}' 
set of gentlemen. But beware, O Bob, how you live with 
them. Remember that 3'our lot in life is to toil, and spin 
too — and calculate how much time it takes a Heavy or a 
man of that condition to do nothing. Sa}^, he dines at 
eight o'clock, and spends seven hours after dinner in pleas- 
ure. Well, if he goes to bed at three in the morning — that 
precious 3'outh must have nine hours' sleep, which bring 
him to twelve o'clock next da}^, when he will have a head- 
ache probabl}', so that he can hardly be expected to dress, 
rally, have devilled chicken and pale ale, and get out before 
three. Friendship — the Club — the visits which he is com- 
pelled to pa}^ occupy him till five or six, and what time is 
there le^ for exercise and a ride in the Park, and for a 
second toilet preparatorj' to dinner, &c. ? — He goes on his 
routine of pleasure, this young Heavy, as you in 3'ours of 
duty — one man in London is pretty nearly as bus}^ as another. 
The company of young " Swells," then, if you will permit me 
the word, is not for you. You must consider that you should 
not spend more than a certain sum for 3?^our dinner — the}^ need 
not. You wear a black coat, and they a shining cuirass and 
monstrous epaulets. Yours is the useful part in life and theirs 
the splendid — though whv speak further on this subject? 
Since the da3's of the Frog and the Bull, a desire to cope with 
Bulls has been known to be fatal to Frogs. 

And to know 3'oung noblemen, and brilliant and notorious 
town bucks and leaders of fashion, has this great disadvan- 
tage — that if 3'ou talk about them or are seen with them 
much, you oflfend all your friends of middle life. It makes 
men angr}' to see their acquaintances better off than thej" them- 
selves are. If you live much with great people, others will be 
sure to say that j'ou are a sneak. I have known Jack Jolliff, 
whose fun and spirits made him adored by the dandies (for 
thej'^ are just such folks as'3'ou and I, only with not quite such 
good brains, and perhaps better manners — simple folks who 



324 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

want to be amused) — I have known Jack Jolliff, I sa}', offend 
a whole roomful of men by telling us that he had been dining 
with a Duke. We hadn't been to dine with a Duke. We were 
not courted b}' grandees — and we disliked the man who was, 
and said he was a parasite, because men of fashion courted 
him. I don't know an}- means by which men hurt themselves 
more in the estimation of their equals than this of talking of 
great folks. A man ma}' mean no harm b3Mt — he speaks of 
the grandees with whom he lives, as you and I do of Jack and 
Tom who give us dinners. But his old acquaintances do not 
forgive him his superiority, and set the Tufthunted down as 
the Tufthunter. 

I remember laughing at the jocular complaint made b}' one 
of this sort, a friend, whom I shall call Main. After Mam 
published his " Travels in the Lib3'an Desert " four 3'ears ago, 
he became a literary lion, and roared in many of the metro- 
politan salons. He is a good-natured fellow, never in the least 
puffed up by his literary success ; and alwa3's said that it would 
not last. His greatest leonine qualit}', however, is his appetite ; 
and to behold him engaged on a Club joint, or to see him make 
away with pounds of turbot, and plate after plate of entrees, 
roasts, and sweets, is indeed a remarkable sight, and refresh- 
ing to those who like to watch animals feeding. But since 
Main has gone out of, and other authors have come into, fash- 
ion — the poor fellow comically grumbles. "That 3'ear of 
lionization has ruined me. The people who used to ask me 
before, don't ask me any more. The}^ are afraid to invite 
me to Bloomsbury, because they fanc}' I am accustomed to 
Ma}^ Fair, and May Fair has long since taken up with a 
new roarer — so that I am quite alone ! " And thus he dines 
at the Club almost ever}^ day at his own charges now, and 
attacks the joint. I do not en ^ the man who comes after 
him to the haunch of mutton. 

If Fate, then, my dear Bob, should bring you in con- 
tact with a lord or two, eat their dinners, enjoy their com- 
pan3% but be mum about them when you go awa}-. 

And though it is a hard and cruel thing to say, I would 
urge you, my dear Bob, specially to be aware of taking pleas- 
ant fellows for your frieaids. Choose a good disagreeable 
friend, if you be wise — a surly, steady, economical, rigid 
fellow. All jolly fellows, all delights of Club smoking-rooms 
and billiard-rooms, all fellows who sing a capital song, and 
the like, are sure to be poor. As they are free with their 
own money, so will they be with yours ; and their verv gen- 



IN LONDON. 325 

rrosit}' and goodness of disposition will prevent them from 
having the means of paying you back. They lend their money 
to some other jolly fellows. They accommodate each other 
by putting their jolly names to the backs of J0II3' bills. Gen- 
tlemen in Cursitor Street are on the look-out for them. Their 
tradesmen ask for them, and find them not. Ah ! Bob, it's 
hard times with a gentleman, when he has to walk round 
a street for fear of meeting a creditor there, and for a man of 
courage, when he can't look a tailor in the face. 

Eschew jolly fellows then, m}' bo}', as the most dangerous 
and costty of company ; and apropos of bills — if I ever hear 
of your putting your name to stamped paper — I will disown 
3^ou, and cut 3'ou off with a protested shilhng. 

I know man}' men who say (whereby I have m}^ private 
opinion of their own probit}) that all poor people are dis- 
honest : this is a hard word, though more generally true than 
some folks suppose — but I fear that all people much in debt 
are not honest. * A man who has to wheedle a tradesman is 
not going through a very honorable business in life — a man 
with a bill becoming due to-morrow morning, and putting a 
good face on it in the Club, is perforce a hypocrite whilst he is 
talking to 3'oii — a man who has to do an}' meanness about 
money I fear me is so nearl}' like a rogue, that it's not much 
use calculating where the difference lies. Let us be very gentle 
with our neighbors' failings ; and forgive our friends their 
debts, as we hope ourselves to be forgiven. But the best thing 
of all to do with your debts is to pay them. Make none ; and 
don't live with people who do. Why, if I dine with a man who 
is notoriousl}' living be3^ond his means, I am a hypocrite cer- 
tainly myself, and I fear a bit of a rogue too. I trj^ to make 
my host beheve that I believe him an honest fellow. I look 
his sham splendor in the face without saying, " You are an im- 
postor." — Alas, Robert, I have partaken of feasts where it 
seemed to me that the plate, the viands, the wine, the servants, 
and butlers, were all sham, like Cinderella's coach and foot- 
men, and would turn into rats and mice, and an old shoe or a 
cabbage- stalk, as soon as we were out of the house and th© 
clock struck twelve. 



326 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 



MR. BROWN THE ELDER TAKES MR. BROWN THE YOUNGER 

TO A CLUB. 

Presuming that m}^ clear Bobb}- would scareel}^ consider 
himself to be an accomplished man about town, until he had 
obtained an entrance into a respectable Club, I am liapp}' to 
inform you that you are this day elected a Member of the 
*' PoWanthus," having been proposed by my friend, Lord 
Viscount Colchicum, and seconded b}' your affectionate uncle. 
I have settled with Mr. vStiff, the worth}^ Secretary, the pre- 
liminary pecuniar}'^ arrangements regarding the entrance fee 
and the first annual subscription — the ensuing paj'ments I shall 
leave to my worth}^ nephew. 

You were elected, sir, with but two black balls ; and every 
other man who was put up for ballot had four,' with the excep- 
tion of Tom Harico, who had more black beans than white. 
Do not, however, be puffed up by this victory, and fancy 
yourself more popular than other men. Indeed I don't mind 
telling you (but, of course, T do not wish it to go any further,) 
that Captain Sl3'boots and I, having suspicions of the Meeting, 
popped a couple of adverse balls into the other candidates' 
boxes ; so that, at least, you should, in case of mishap, not be 
unaccompanied in ill fortune. 

Now, then, that 3'ou are a member of the " Polj^anthus," I 
trust 3'ou will comport yourself with propriety in the place : 
and permit me to offer you a few hints with regard to 3'our 
bearing. 

We are not so stiff at the " Polvanthus " as at some clubs I 
could name — and a good deal of decent intimac}' takes place 
amongst us. — Do not therefore enter the Club, as I have seen 
men do at the "Chokers" (of which I am also a member), 
with 3'our e3'es scowling under 3'our hat at 3'Our neighbor, and 
with an expression of countenance which seems to sa3', " Hang 
3'Our impudence, sir. How dare 3'ou stare at me?" Banish 
that absurd dignit3^ and swagger, which do not at all become 
3^our 3'outhful countenance, m3' dear Bob, and let us walk up 
the steps and into the place. See, old Noseworth3' is in the 
bow-window reading the paper — he is always in the bow- 
window reading the paper. 

We pass by the worth3' porter, and alert pages — a fifteen- 
hundredth part of each of whom is henceforth 3'our paid-for prop- 



IN LONDON. 327 

erty — and 3'ou see he takes down jour name as Mr. R. Brown, 
Junior, and will know 3'ou and be civil to 3^011 until death — Ha, 
there is Jawkins, as usual ; he has nailed poor Styles up against 
a pillar, and is telling him what the opinion of the Cit3' is about 
George Hudson, Esq., and when Sir Robert will take the gov- 
ernment. How d'3'OiT do, Jawkins? — Satisfactor3^ news from 
India? Gilbert to be made Baron Gilbert of Goojerat? In- 
deed, I don't introduce 3'ou to Jawkins, my poor Bob ; he will 
do that for himself, and 3'ou will have quite enough of him 
before many da3's are over. 

Those three gentlemen sitting on the sofa are from our 
beloved sister island ; they come here ever3^ day, and wait for 
the Honorable Member for Ballinafad, who is at present in the 
writing-room. 

I have remarked, in London, however, that ever3^ Irish gen- 
tleman is accompanied b3' other Irish gentlemen, who wait for 
him as here, or at the corner of the street. These are waiting 
until the Honorable Member for Ballinafad can get them three 
places, in the Excise, in the Customs, and a little thing in the 
Post Office, no doubt. One of them sends home a tremendous 
account of parties and politics here, which appears in the Bal- 
linafad Banner. He knows everything. He has just been 
closeted with Peel, and can vouch for it that Clarendon has 
been sent for. He knows who wrote the famous pamphlet, 
" Ways and Means for Ireland," — all the secrets of the present 
Cabinet, the designs of Sir James Graham. How Lord John 
can live under those articles which he writes in the Banner is a 
miracle to me ! I hope he will get that little thing in the Post 
Office soon. 

This is the newspaper-room — enter the Porter with the 
evening papers — what a rush the men make for them ! Do 
30U want to see one? Here is the Standard — nice article about 
the "Starling Club" — very pleasant, candid, gentleman-like 
notice — Club composed of clergymen, atheists, authors, and 
artists. Their chief conversation is blasphem3^ : they have 
statues of Socrates and Mahomet on the centre-piece of the 
dinner-table, take every opportunit3^ of being disrespectful to 
Moses, and a dignified clergyman always proposes the Glorious, 
Pious, and Immortal Memory of Confucius. Grace is said 
backwards, and the Catechism treated with the most irreverent 
ribakhy by the comic authors and the general company. — Are 
these men to be allowed to meet, and their horrid orgies to 
continue? Have you had enough? — Let us go into the other 
rooms. 



328 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

What a calm and pleasant seclusion the libraiy presents after 
the bawl and bustle of the newspaper-room ! There is never any- 
body here. English gentlemen get up such a prodigious quantity 
of knowledge in their earl}^ life, that they leave off reading soon 
after they begin to shave, or never look at anything but a news- 
paper. How pleasant this room is, — isn't it? with its sober 
draperies, and long calm lines of peaceful volumes — nothing 
to interrupt the quiet — onl}' the melody of Horner's nose as he 
lies asleep upon one of the sofas. What is he reading? Hah ! 
'' Pendennis," No. VII. — hum, let us pass on. Have you 
read " David Copperfield," b}^ the way? How beautiful it is — 
how charmingly fresh and simple ! In those admirable touches 
of tender humor — and I should call humor, Bob, a mixture of 
love and wit — who can equal this great genius? There are 
little words and phrases in his books which are like personal 
benefits to the reader. What a place it is to hold in the affec- 
tions of men ! What an awful responsibility hanging over a 
writer ! What man holding such a place, and knowing that his 
words go forth to vast congregations of mankind, — to grown 
folks — to their children, and perhaps to their children's chil- 
dren, — but must think of his calling with a solemn and humble 
heart ! May love and truth guide such a man always ! It is an 
awful praj^er ; may heaven further its fulfilment. And then, 
Bob, let the Record revile him — See, here's Horner waking 
up — How do 3'ou do, Horner? 

This neighbormg room, which is almost as quiet as the 
librar}", is the card-room, 3'ou see. There are always three or 
four devotees assembled in it ; and the lamps are scarcely ever 
out in this Temple of Trumps. 

I admire, as I see them, m}" dear Bobby, grave and silent 
at these little green tables, not moved outwardly b}' grief or 
pleasure at losing or winning, but calmly pursuing their game 
(as that pursuit is called, which is in fact the most elaborate 
science and study) at noonda3^, entirel}^ absorbed, and philo- 
sophicall}^ indifferent to the bustle and turmoil of the enormous 
working world without. Disraeli may make his best speech ; 
the Hungarians ma}- march into Vienna ; the Protectionists 
come in ; Louis Philippe be restored ; or the Thames set on 
fire ; and Colonel Pam and Mr. Trumpington will never leave 
their table, so engaging is their occupation at it. The turning 
up of an ace is of more interest to them than all the affairs of 
all the world besides — and so they will go on until Death sum- 
mons them, and their last trump is played. 

It is curious to think that a century ago almost all gentle- 



IN LONDON. 329 

men, soldiers, statesmen, men of science, and divines, passed 
hours at play eveiy day ; as our grandmothers did hkewise. 
The poor old kings and queens must feel the desertion now, 
and deplore the present small number of their worshippers, as 
compared to the myriads of faithful subjects who served them 
in past times. 

I do not say that other folks' pursuits are much more or less 
futile ; but fancy a life such as that of the Colonel — eight or 
nine hours of sleep, eight of trumps, and the rest for business, 
reading, exercise, and domestic dut}- or affection (to be sure 
he's most likely a bachelor, so that the latter offices do not oc- 
cupy him much) — fancy such a life, and at its conclusion at 
the age of seventy-five, the worthy gentleman being able to 
say, I have spent twenty-five years of my existence turning up 
trumps. 

With Trumpington matters are different. Whist is a pro- 
fession with him, just as much as Law is yours. He makes 
the deepest study of it — he makes ever}' sacrifice to his pursuit : 
he may be fond of wine and compan}-, but he eschews both, to 
keep his head cool and play his rubber. He is a man of good 
parts, and was once well read, as you see by his conversation 
when he is away from the table, but he gives up reading for 
play — and knows that to play well a man must pla}^ every day. 
He makes three or four hundred a year by his Whist, and well 
he may — with his brains, and half his industry, he could make 
a larger income at an}' other profession. 

In a game with these two gentlemen, the one who has been 
actually seated at that card-table for a term as long as your 
whole life, the other who is known as a consummate practitioner, 
do you think it is hkely you will come off a winner ? The state of 
your fortune is your look-out, not theirs. They are there at 
their posts — like knights ready to meet all comers. If j-ou 
choose to engage them, sit down. They will, with the most 
perfect probity, calmness, and elegance of manner, win and win 
of you until they have won every shiUing of a fortune, when 
they will make you a bow, and wish you good morning. You 
may go and drown yourself afterwards — it is not their business. 
Their business is to be present in that room, and to play cards 
with 3'ou or anybod3\ When you are done with — Bon jour. 
My dear Colonel, let me introduce you to a new member, my 
nephew, Mr. Robert Brown. 

The other two men at the table are the Honorable G. Wind- 
gall and Mr. Chanter : perhaps you have not heard that the 
one made rather a queer settlement at the last Derby ; and the 



330 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

other has just issued from one of her Majest3^'s establishments 
in St. George's Fields. 

Either of these gentlemen is perfectly affable, good-natured, 
and eas}^ of access — and will cut 3'ou for half-crowns if you 
like, or pla3^ 3'ou at an}' game on the cards. The}'' descend 
from their broughams or from horseback at the Club door with 
the most splendid air, and the}- feast upon the best dishes and 
wines in the place. 

But do you think it advisable to pla}' cards with them? 
Which know the games best — 3'ou or the}' ? Which are most 
likely — we will not say to play foul — but to take certain little 
advantages in the game which their consummate experience 
teaches them — you or they? Finally, is it a matter of perfect 
certainty, if you won, that they would pay you? 

Let us leave these gentlemen, my dear Bob, and go through 
the rest of the house. 

From the librar}- we proceed to the carved and gilded draw- 
ing-room of the Club, the damask hangings of which are em- 
broidered with our lovely emblem, the Polyanthus, and which 
is fitted with a perfectly unintelligible splendor. Sardanapalus, 
if he had pawned one of his kingdoms, could not have had such 
mirrors as one of those in which I see my dear Bob admiring 
the tie of his cravat with such complacenc}', and I am sure I 
cannot comprehend why Smith and Brown should have their 
persons reflected in such vast sheets of quicksilver ; or why, if 
we have a mind to a sixpenny cup of tea and muffins, when we 
come in with muddy boots from a dirty walk, those refresh- 
ments should be served to us as we occupy a sofa much more 
splendid, and far better stuffed, than any Louis Quatorze ever 
sat upon. I want a sofa, as I want a friend, upon which I can 
repose familiarly. If you can't have intimate terms and free- 
dom with one and the other, they are of no good. A full-dress 
Club is an absurdity — and no man ought to come into this room 
except in a uniform or court suit. I daren't put my feet on 
yonder sofa for fear of sullying the damask, or, worse still, for 
fear that Hicks the Committee-man should pass, and spy out 
my sacrilegious boots on the cushion. 

We pass through these double-doors, and enter rooms of a 
very different character. 

By the faint and sickly odor pervading this apartment, by 
the opened windows, by the circular stains upon the marble 
tables, which indicate the presence of brandies-and-waters long 
passed into the world of spirits, my dear Bob will have no diffi- 



IN LONDON. 331 

culty in recognizing the smoking-room, where I dare sa}' he will 
pass a good deal of his valuable time henceforth. 

If I could recommend a sure wa}' of advancement and profit 
to a 3'oung man about town, it would be, after he has come 
awa}' from a friend's house and dinner, where he has to a surety 
had more than enough of claret and good things, when he ought 
to be going to bed at midnight, so that he might rise fresh and 
early for his morning's work, to stop, nevertheless, for a couple 
of hours at the Club, and smoke in this room and tipple weak 
brandj'-and- w ater . 

B3' a perseverance in this S3'stem, 3'ou ma3' get a number 
of advantages. B3^ sitting up till three of a summer morning, 
3^ou have the advantage of seeing the sun rise, and as 3^ou walk 
home to Pump Court, can mark the quiet of the streets in the 
ros3^ glimmer of the dawn. You can easil3^ spend in that 
smoking-room, (as for the billiard-room adjacent, how much 
more can't 3'ou get rid of there,) and without an3^ inconvenience 
or extravagance whatever, enough mone3' to keep 3'Ou a horse. 
Three or four cigars when 3'ou are in the Club, 3'our case filled 
when 3^ou are going awa3', a couple of glasses of ver3' weak 
cognac and cold water, will cost 3'ou sixty pounds a 3'ear, as 
sure as 3'our name is Bob Brown. And as for the smoking 
and tippling, plus billiards, the3' ma3^ be made to cost an3'- 
thing. 

And then 3'ou have the advantage of hearing such delightful 
and instructive conversation in a Club smoking-room, between 
the hours of twelve and three ! Men who frequent that place 
at that hour are commonly men of studious habits and philo- 
sophical and reflective minds, to whose opinions it is pleasant 
and profitable to listen. They are full of anecdotes, which are 
always moral and well chosen ; their talk is never free, or on 
light subjects. I have one or two old smoking-room pillars in 
my eye now, who would be perfect models for an3^ 3'Oung gentle- 
man entering life, and to w^hom a father could not do better 
than intrust the education of his son. 

To drop the satirical vein, my dear Bob, I am compelled as 
a man to say my opinion, that the best thing 3'Ou can do with 
regard to that smoking-room is to keep out of it ; or at any rate 
never to be seen in the place after midnight. The3^ are very 
pleasant and frank, those jolly fellows, those loose fishes, those 
fast 3'oung men — but the race in life is not to such fast 3'oung 
men as these — and 3'OU who want to win must get up earl3' of 
a morning, m3' boy. You and an old college-chum or two may 
sit together over jouv cigar-boxes in one another's chambers, 



332 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

and talk till all hours, and do yourselves good probably. Talk- 
ing among jou is a wholesome exercitation ; humor comes in an 
eas}' flow ; it doesn't preclude grave argument and manl}' inter- 
change of thought — I own myself, when I was younger, to 
have smoked many a pipe w4th advantage in the company* of 
Doctor Parr. Honest men, with pipes or cigars in their mouths, 
have great ph3'Sical advantages in conversation. You ma}' stop 
talking if 3'ou like — but the breaks of silence never seem dis- 
agreeable, being filled up by the puffing of the smoke — hence 
there is no awkwardness in resuming the conversation — no 
straining for effect — sentiments are delivered in a grave easy 
manner — the cigar harmonizes the societ}', and soothes at once 
the speaker and the subject whereon he converses. I have no 
doubt that it is from the habit of smoking that Turks and 
American Indians are such monstrous well-bred men. The 
pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts 
up the mouth of the foolish : it generates a style of conversa- 
tion, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaflTected : in 
fact, dear Bob, I must out with it — I am an old smoker. At 
home I have done it up the chimne}' rather than not do it (the 
which I own is a crime). I vow and believe that the cigar has 
been one of the greatest creature-comforts of my life — a kind 
companion, a gentle stimulant, an amiable anodyne, a cementer 
of friendship. May I die if I abuse that kindl}^ weed which 
has given me so much pleasure ! 

Since I have been a member of that Club, what numbers of 
men have occupied this room and departed from it, like so 
many smoked-out cigars, leaving nothing behind but a little 
disregarded ashes ! Bob, m}" boy, they drop off in the course 
of twenty years, our boon companions, and J0II3' fellow bottle- 
crackers. — I mind me of many a good fellow who has talked 
and laughed here, and whose pipe is put out for ever. Men, I 
remember as dashing youngsters but the other day, have passed 
into the state of old fogies : they have sons, sir, of almost our 
age, when first we joined the " Polyanthus." Grass grows 
over others in all parts of the world. Where is poor Ned? 
Where is poor Fred ? Dead rhymes with Ned and Fred too — 
their place knows them not — their names one 3'ear appeared 
at the end of the Club list, under the dismal cates^ory of ''Mem- 
bers Deceased," in which you and I shall rank some day. Do 
you keep that subject steadily in your mind? I do not see wh3^ 
one shouldn't meditate upon Death in Pall Mall as well as in a 
howling wilderness. There is enough to remind one of it at 
every corner. There is a strange face looking out of Jack's old 



IN LONDON. 333 

lodgings in Jerm3'n Street, — somebod}^ else has got the Club 
chair which Tom used to occupy. He doesn't dine here and 
grumble as he used formerly. He has been sent for, and has 
not come back again — one day Fate will send for us, and we 
shall not return — and the people will come down to the Club 
as usual, saying, " Well, and so poor old Brown is gone." — In- 
deed, a smoking-room on a morning is not a cheerful spot. 

Our room has a series of tenants of quite distinct characters. 
After an early and sober dinner below, certain habitues of the 
" Polyanthus" mount up to this apartment for their coffee and 
cigar, and talk as gravety as Sachems at a Palaver. Trade and 
travel, politics and geography, are their discourse — they are 
in bed long before their successors the jolly fellows begin their 
night hfe, and the talk of the one set is as different to the con- 
versation of the other, as any talk can be. 

After the grave old Sachems, come other frequenters of the 
room ; a squad of sporting men very likely — very solemn and 
silent personages these — who give the odds, and talk about the 
Cup in a darkling undertone. Then you shall have three or 
four barristers with high voices, seldom able to sit long without 
talking of their profession, or mentioning something about 
Westminster Hall. About eleven, men in white neck-cloths 
drop in from dinner-parties, and show their lacquered boots and 
shirt-studs with a little complacency — and at midnight, after 
the theatres, the 3'oung rakes and viveurs come swaggering in, 
and call loudly for gin-twist. 

But as for a Club smoking-room after midnight, I vow again 
that you are better out of it : that j'ou will waste money and 
your precious hours and health there ; and you may frequent 
this ' ' Polyanthus " room for a year, and not carry away from 
the place one single idea or story that can do you the least 
good in life. How much you shall take away of another sort, I 
do not here set down ; but I have before my mind's eye the 
image of old Silenus, with purple face and chalk-stone fingers, 
telling his foul old garrison legends over his gin-and-water. 
He is in the smoking-room every night ; and I feel that no one 
can get benefit from the societ}^ of that old man. 

What society he has he gets from this place. He sits for 
hours in a corner of the sofa, and makes up his parties here. 
He will ask you after a little time, seeing that you are a gentle- 
man and have a good address, and will give you an exceedingly 
good dinner. I went once, years ago, to a banquet of his — 
and found all the men at his table were Polyanthuses : so that 



334 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

it was a house dinner in Square, with Mrs. Silenus at the 

head of the table. 

After dinner she retired and was no more seen, and Silenus 
amused himself by making poor Mr. Tippleton drunk. He 
came to the Chib the next da}', he amused himself bj^ describing 
the arts b}' which he had practised upon the eas}' brains of poor 
Mr. Tippleton — (as if that poor fellow wanted anj' arts or 
persuasion to induce him to intoxicate himself), and told all 
the smoking-room how he had given a dinner, how many bottles 
of wine had been emptied, and how many Tippleton had drunk 
for his share. '" 1 kept my eye on Tip, sir," the horrid old 
fellow said — *'! took care to make him mix his liquors well, 
and before eleven o'clock I finished him, and had him as drunk 
as a lord, sir ! " Will you like to have that gentleman for a 
friend ? He has elected himself our smoking-room king at the 
"Polyanthus," and midnight monarch. 

As he talks, in comes poor Tippleton -^ a kind soul — a gen- 
tleman — a man of reading and parts — who has friends at 
home very likeh', and had once a career before him — and what 
is he now ? His e3^es are vacant ; he reels into a sofa corner, 
and sits in maudlin silence, and hiccups everj' now and then. 
Old Silenus winks knowingly round at the whole smoking- 
room : most of the men sneer — some pity — some ver^^ young 
cubs laugh and jeer at him. Tippleton's drunk. 

From the Library and Smoking-room regions let us descend 
to the lower floor. Here j'ou behold the Coffee-room, where 
the neat little tables are alreadj' laid out, awaiting the influx of 
diners. 

A great advance in civilization w^as made, and the honesty 
as well as economy of young men of the middle classes im- 
mensely promoted, when the ancient tavern system was over- 
thrown, and those houses of meeting instituted where a man, 
without sacrificing his dignit}-, could dine for a couple of shil- 
lings. I remember in the daj's of my youth when a very mod- 
erate dinner at a reputable cofl^ee-house cost a man half a 
guinea : when 3'OU were obliged to order a pint of wine for the 
good of the house ; when the waiter got a shilling for his at- 
tendance ; and when 3'oung gentlemen were no richer than they 
are now, and had to pa}' thrice as much as they at present need 
to disburse for the maintenance of their station. 

Then men (who had not the half-guinea at command) used 
to dive into dark streets in the vicinage of Soho or Covent Gar- 
den, and get a meagre meal at shilling taverns — or Tom, the 
clerk, issued out from your Chambers in Pump Court and 



m LONDON. 335 

brought back your dinner between two plates from a neighbor- 
ing ham-and-beef shop. Either repast was strictly honorable, 
and one can find no earthl}' fault with a poor gentleman for 
eating a poor meal. But that solitar^^ meal in Chambers was 
indeed a dismal refection. I think with anything but regret of 
those lonely feasts of beef and cabbage ; and how there was no 
resource for the long evenings but those books, over which you 
had been poring all da}', or the tavern with its deuced ex- 
penses, oi- the theatre with its vicious attractions. A 3'oung 
bachelor's life was a clums}' piece of wretchedness then — mis- 
managed and ill-economized — just as 3'our Temple Chambers 
or College rooms now are, which are quite behind the age in the 
decent conveniences which every modern tenement possesses. 

And that dining for a shilling and strutting about Pall Mall 
afterwards was, after all, an hj'pocris}'. At the time when the 
^^Trois Freres Proi^engaux" aJt Paris had two entrances, one 
into the place of the Palais Ro3'al, and one into the street be- 
hind, where the sixteen-sous dinner-houses are, I have seen 
bucks with profuse toothpicks walk out of these latter houses of 
entertainment, pass up the '■'-Trois Freres'' stairs, and descend 
from the other door into the Palais Ro3'al, so that the people 
walking there might fanc3^ these poor fellows had been dining 
regardless of expense. No ; what 3'ou call putting a good face 
upon poverty, that is, hiding it under a grin, or concealing its 
rags under a makeshift, is always rather a base stratagem. 
Your Beaux Tibbs and twopenn3' dandies can never be respect- 
able altogether ; and if a man is poor, I say he ought to seem 
poor ; and that both he and Society are in the wrong, if either 
sees an3' cause of shame in povcrt3\ 

That is why we ought to be thankful for Clubs. Here is 
no skulking to get a cheap dinner ; no ordering of expensive 
liquors and dishes for the good of the house, or cowering sen- 
sitiveness as to the opinion of the waiter. We advance in sim- 
plicity and honesty as we advance in civiHzation, and it is my 
belief that we become better bred and less artificial, and tell 
more truth every da3'. 

This, you see, is the Club Coffee-room — it is three o'clock ; 
young Wideawake is just finishing his breakfast (with whom 
I have nothing to do at present, but to say parenthetically, 
that if you ivill sit up till five o'clock in the morning. Bob my 
^oy^ you may look out to have a headache and a breakfast at 
three in the afternoon). Wideawake is at breakfast — Golds- 
worthy is ordering his dinner — while Mr. Nudgit, whom you 
see yonder, is making his lunch. In those two gentlemen is 



336 SKETCHES Al^D TRAVELS 

the moral and exemplification of the previous little remarks 
which I have been making. 

You must know, sir, that at the " Polyanthus," in common 
TV'itli most Clubs, gentlemen* are allowed to enjoj', gratis, in the 
Coffee-room, bread, beer, sauces, and pickles. 

After four o'clock, if 30U order jour dinner, you have to 
pay sixpence for what is called the table — the clean cloth, 
the vegetables, cheese, and so forth : before that hour you may 
have lunch, when there is no table charge. 

Now, Goklswortli}- is a gentleman and a man of genius, 
who has courage and simplicit}* enough to be poor — not like 
some fellows whom one meets, and who make a, fanfuronnade of 
poverty, and draping themselves in their rags, seem to cry, 
'' See how virtuous I am, — how honest Diogenes is ! " but he is 
a ver}' poor man, wiiose education and talents are of the best, 
and who in so far claims to rank with the verj' best people in 
the w^orld. In his place in Parliament, when he takes off his 
hat (which is both old and well brushed), the Speaker's eye 
is prett}' sure to meet his, and the House listens to him with 
the respect which is due to so much honesty and talent. He 
is the equal of an}- man, however lofty or wealthy. His social 
position is rather improved by his poverty, and the world, which 
is a manly and generous world in its impulses, however it may 
be in its practice, contemplates with a sincere regard and 
admiration Mi*. Goldsworthv's manner of bearins: his lack 
of fortune. He is o^oinsr to dine for a shillino;: he will have 
two mutton-chops (and the mutton-cho[) is a thing unknown 
in domestic life and in the palaces of epiciu'es, where you 
may get cutlets dressed with all sorts of French sauces, but 
not the admirable mutton-chop), and with a due allowance of 
the Club bread and beer, he will make a perfectly wholesome, 
and sufficient, and excellent meal : and go down to the House 
and fire into Ministers this verv nioht. 

Now, I say, this man dining for a shilling is a pleasant 
spectacle to behold. I respect Mr. Goldsworthy with all my 
heart, without shaiing those ultra-conservative political opin- 
ions which we all know he entertains, and from which no in- 
terest, temi)tation, or hope of place will cause him to swerve ; 
and you see he is waited upon with as much respect here as 
old Sileniis, though he order the most sumptuous banquet the 
cook can devise, or bully the w.aiters ever so. 

But ah. Bob ! what can we say of the conduct of that poor 
little Mr. Nudgit? He has a bedcliamber in some court un- 
known in the neighborhood of the '^ Polyanthus." He makes 



IN LONDON. 337 

a breakfast with the Chib brend and 1)eer ; he hinches off the 
same sii[)plies — and being of an Ei)icui'ean taste, look what 
lie does — he is actuall}' pouring a cruet of anchovy sauce over 
his bread to give it a flavor; and I liave seen the unconscion- 
abU^. little gorniand sidle off to the pickle-jars when he thought 
nobody was observing, and po[) a walnut or half a dozen of 
l)ickled onions into his mouth, and swallow them with a hideous 
furtive relish. 

He disappears at dinner-time, and returns at half-past seven 
or eight o'clock, and wanders round the tables wdien the men 
are at their dessert and generous over their wine. He has a 
number of little stories about the fashionable world to tell, and 
is not unentertaining. When you dine here, sometimes give 
Nudoit a i>;lass or two out of vour decanter, Bob, mv bov, 
and comfort his poor old soul. He w^as a gentleman once and 
had mone^•, as he will be sure to tell vou. He is mean and 
feel)le, but not unkind — a poor little parasite not to be un- 
l)itied. Mr. Nudgit, allow me to introduce you to a new mem- 
ber, my nephew, Mr. Robert Brown. 

At this moment, old Silenus swaggers in, bearing his great 
waistcoat before him, and walking up to the desk where the 
coffee-room clerk sits and wiiere the bills of fare are displayed. 
As he passes, he has to undergo the fire of Mr. Goldswoithy's 
eves, which dart out at him two flashes of the most killino- 
scorn. He has passed by the battery without sinking, and 
lays himself alongside the desk. Nudgit watches him, and will 
presently go uj) smirking humbly to join him. 

" Hunt," he says, " I want a table, my table, you know, at 
seven — dinner for ei2,ht — Loi'd Hobanob dines with me — 
send the butler — What's in the bill of fare? Let's have clear 
souj) and tuitle — I've sent it in from the city — dressed fish 
and turbot," and with a swollen trembling hand he writes 
down a pompous bill of fare. 

As I said, Nudgit comes up simpering, with a newspaper 
in his hand. 

''Hullo, Nudg!" says Mr. Silenus, "how's the beer? 
Pickles good to-day ? " 

Nudgit smiles in a gentle deprecatory manner. 

" Smell out a good dinner, hey, Nudg?" says Dives. 

" If an_y man knows how to give one, you do," answ^ers the 
poor beggar. " I wasn't a bad hand at ordering a dinner 
mvself, once; what's the fish in the list to-dav?" and with a 
weak smile he casts his eye over the bill of fare. 

*'Lord Hobvinob dines with me, and he knows what a 

22 



338 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

good dinner is, I can tell you," sa3-s Mr. Silenus, "so does 
Cramle}^" 

"Both well-known epicures," says Nudgit. 

"I'm goinoj to criye Hobanob a return dinner to his at 
the ' Rhododendrum.' He bet me that Batifol, the chef at the 
' Rhododendrum,' did better than our man can. Hob's dinner 
was last Wednesda}", and I don't say it wasn't a good one ; or 
that taking Grosbois b}' surprise, is giving him quita fair play -^ 
but we'll see, Nudgit. 7 know what Grosbois can do." 

" I should think 3'ou did, indeed, Silenus," sa3's the other. 

"I see 3^our mouth's watering. I'd ask you, onl^- I know 
you're engaged. You're alwa3's engaged, Nudgit — not to-da3^? 
"Well then, 3'ou ma3' come ; and I sa3', Mr. Nudgit, we'll have 
a wet evening, sir, mind 3'ou that." 

Mr. Bowls, the butler, here coming in, Mr. Silenus falls into 
conversation with him about wines and icing. I am glad poor 
Nudgit has got his dinner. He will go and walk in the Park to 
get up an appetite. And now, Mr. Bob, having shown 3'ou over 
your new house, I too will bid 3'ou for the present farewell. 



A WORD ABOUT BALLS IN SEASON. 

When m3^ good friend, Mr. Punch., some time since, asked 
me to compile a series of conversations for young men in the 
dancing world, so that thev' might be agreeable to their part- 
ners, and advance their own success in life, I consented with 
a willing heart to my venerable friend's request, for I desire 
nothing better than to promote the amusement and happiness 
of all young people ; and nothing, I thought, would be easier 
than to touch off a few light, airy, graceful little sets of phrases, 
which 3'oung fellows might adopt or expand, according to their 
own ingenuity and leisure. 

Well, sir, I imagined myself, just for an instant, to be 3'oung 
again, and that I had a neat waist instead of that bow-window 
with which Time and Nature have ornamented the castle of m3^ 
body, and brown locks instead of a bald pate (there was a time, 
sir, when my hair was not considered the worst part of me, and 
I recollect when I was a young man in the Militia, and when 
pigtails finally went out 112 our corps, who it was that longed to 



IN LONDON. 339 

have my queue — it was found in her desk at her death, and my 
poor dear wife was alwaj^s jealous of her,) — I just chose, I saj', 
to fancy m3'self a .young man, and that I would go up in imagi- 
nation and ask a girl to dance with me. So I chose Maria — 
a man might go farther and fare worse than choose Maria, 
Mr. Bob. 

"My dear Miss E.," says I, "may I have the honor of 
dancing the next set with ^'ou ? " 

"The next whaiV sa3'S Miss E., smiling, and turning to 
Mrs. E., as if to ask what a set meant. 

"I forgot," says I ; " the next quadrille, I would say." 

" It is rather slow dancing quadrilles," says Miss E. ; " but 
if I must, I must." 

" Well, then, a waltz, will that do? I know nothing prettier 
than a waltz pla3'ed not too quick." 

" What ! " saj^s she, " do 3'ou want a horrid old three-timed 
waltz, like that which the little figures dance upon the barrel- 
organs? You sill3^ old creature: 3^ou are good-natured, but 
3'OU are in your dotage. All these dances are passed awa3'. 
You might as well ask me to wear a gown with a waist up to 
my shoulders, like that in which mamma was married ; or a 
hoop and high heels, like grandmamma in the picture ; or to 
dance a gavotte or a minuet. Things are changed, old gentle- 
man — the fashions of 3'our time arc gone, and — and the bucks 
of 3^our time will go too, Mr. Brown. If I want to dance, here 
is Captain Whiskerfield, who is ready ; or 3'Oung Studdington, 
who is a delightful partner. He brings a little animation into 
our balls ; and when he is not in societ3% dances every night at 
Vauxhall and the Casino." 

I pictured to myself Maria giving some such repl3^ to m3' 
equall3' imaginative demand — for of course I never made the 
request, an3' more than she did the answer — and in fact, dear 
Bob, after turning over the matter of ball-room conversations 
in m3^ mind, and sitting with pen and ink before me for a couple 
of hours, I found that I had nothing at all to sa3'' on the subject, 
and have no more risfht to teach a vouth what he is to sav in 
the present day to his partner, than I should have had in my 
own bo3"hood to instruct m3' own grandmother in the art of 
sucking eggs. We should pa3' as much reverence to 3'outh as 
we should to age ; there are points in which 3'ou 3'oung folks 
are altogether our superiors : and I can't help constantly cr3^ing 
out to persons of m3^ own 3'ears, when busied about their 3'oung 
people — leave them alone ; don't be alwa3^s meddling with their 
affairs, which they can manage for themselves ; don't be alwa3's 



340 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

insisting upon managing their boats, and putting 3-our oars in 
the water with theirs. 

So I have the modesty to think that Mr. Punch and I were 
a couple of conceited old fogies, in devising the above plan of 
composing conversation for the benefit of youth, and that young 
folk can manage to talk of what interests them, without inny 
prompting on our part. To say the truth, I have haidly been 
to a ball these three 3'ears. I s^w the head of the stair at 

H. E.'s the T Ambassador in Br ne Square, the other 

night, but retired without even getting a sight of, or making my 
bow to Her Excellency ; thinking wisel}' that man hit de poule 
et mon bonnet de nult much better became me at that hour of 
midniglit than the draught in a crowded passage, and the sight 
of ever so man}' beauties. 

But though I don't go myself to these assemblies, I have 
intelligence amongst people who go : and hear from the girls 
and their mammas what the}' do, and how they enjoy themselves. 
I must own that some of the new arrangements please me very 
much, as being natural and simple, and, in so far, superior to 
the old mode. 

In mv time, for instance, a ball-room used to be more than 
half-filled with old male and female fogies, whose persons took 
up a great deal of valuable room, who did not in the least orna- 
ment the walls against which the}' stood, and who would have 
been much better at home in bed. In a great country-house, 
where you have a hall fireplace in which an ox might be roasted 
conveniently, the presence of a few score more or less of stout 
old folks can make no difference ; there is room for them at the 
card-tables, and round the supper-board, and the sight of their 
honest red faces and white waistcoats lining the w^all cheers and 
illuminates the Assembly Room. 

But it is a very different case when you have a small house 
in May Fair, or in the pleasant district of Pimlico and Tyburn ; 
and accordingly I am happy to hear that the custom is rapidly 
spreading of asking none but dancing people to balls. It was 
only this morning that I was arguing the point with our cousin 
Mrs. Crowder, who was greatly irate because her daughter 
Fanny had received an invitation to go with her aunt Mrs. 
Timmins, to Lady Tutbury's ball, whereas poor Mrs. Crowder 
had been told that she could on no account get a card. 

Now Blanche Crowder is a very laro-e woman naturallv, and 
with the present fashion of flounces in dress, this balloon of 
a creature would occupy the best part of a little back drawing- 
room ; whereas Rosa Timmins is a little bit of a thing, who 



IN LONDON. 341 

takes up no space at all, and furnishes the side of ^ room 
as prettily as a bank of flowers could. I tried to convince 
our cousin upon this point, this embonpoint^ I ma}* sa}', and 
of course being- too polite to make remarks personal to Mrs. 
Crovvder, I playfully directed them elsewhere. 

" Dear Blanche," said I, " don't you see how greatly Ladj^ 
Tutbury would have to extend her premises if all the relatives 
of all her dancers were to be invited? She has already flung 
out a marquee over the leads, and actuall}' included the cistern 
— what can she do more ! If all the girls were to have chap- 
erons, where could the elders sit? Tutbur3' himself will not 
be present. He is a large and roomy man, like your humble 
servant, and Lady Tut has sent him off to Greenwich, or the 
' Star and Garter ' for the night, where, I have no doubt, he 
and some other stout fellows will make themselves comfortable. 
At a ball amongst persons of moderate means and large 
acquaintance in London, room is much more precious than 
almost anybody's companv, except that of the beauties and the 
dancers. Look at Loi'd Trampleton, that enormous hulking 
monster, (who nevertheless dances beautifully, as all big men 
do,) when he takes out his favorite partner. Miss Wirledge, 
to polk, his arm, as he whisks her round and round, forms 
radii of a circle of very considerable diameter. He almost 
wants a room to himself. Young men and women now, when 
they dance, dance really ; it is no lazy sauntering, as of old, 
but downright hard work — after which they want air and re- 
freshment. How can the}" get the one, when the rooms are filled 
with elderly folks ; or the other, when we are squeezing round 
the supper-tables, and drinking up all the available champagne 
and seltzer- water? No, no; the present plan, which I hear 
is becoming general, is admirable for London. Let there be 
half a dozen of goocl, active, bright-eyed chaperons and duennas, 
little women, who are more active, and keep a better look-out 
than your languishing voluptuous beauties" (I said this cast- 
ing at the same time a look of peculiar tenderness towards 
Blanche Crowder) ; "let them keep watch and see that all 
is rioht — that the youni? men don't dance too often with the 
same girl, or disappear on to the balcony, and that soi't of 
thing ; let them have good large roomy familj' coaches to carry 
the young women home to their mammas. In a word, at a 
ball, let there be for the future no admittance except upon busi- 
ness. In all the affairs of London life, that is the rule, depend 
upon it." 

*' And pray who told you, Mr. Brown, that I didn't wish 



342 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

to dance mj'self?" says Blanche, surveying her great person 
in the looking-glass (which could scarcely- contain it) and floun- 
cing out of the room ; and I actuallj' believe that the uncon- 
scionable creature, at her age and size, is still thinking that she 
is a fairy, and that the 3'oung fellows would like to dance round 
the room with her. Ah, Bob ! I remember that grotesque 
woman a slim and graceful girl. I remember others tender 
and beautiful, whose bright eyes glitter, and whose sweet 
voices whisper no more. So they pass awa}^ — 3'outh and beaut}', 
love and innocence, pass awa}' and perish. I think of one now 
whom I remember the fairest and the gayest, the kindest and 
the purest ; her laughter was music — I can hear it still, though 
it will never echo any more. Far away the silent tomb closes 
over her. Other roses than those of our prime grow up and 
bloom, and have their day. Honest j^outh, generous 3'outh, 
may yours be as pure and as fair ! 

I did not think, when I began to write it, that the last sen- 
tence would have finished so ; but life is not altogether jocular, 
Mr. Bob, and one comes upon serious thoughts suddenly as 
upon a funeral in the street. Let us go back to the business 
we are upon, namely, balls, whereof it, perhaps, has struck 
3'ou that 3'our uncle has ver3' little to sa3\ 

I saw one announced in the morning fashionable print to- 
da3', with a fine list of some of the greatest folks in London, 
and had previousl3' heard from various quarters how eager 
man3' persons were to attend it, and how splendid an entertain- 
ment it was to be. And so the morning paper announced 
that Mrs. Hornby Madox threw open her house in So-and-so 
Street, and was assisted in receiving her guests b3' Lad3' 
Fugleman. 

Now this is a sort of entertainment and ^arrangement than 
which I confess I can conceive nothing more queer, though I be- 
lieve it is by no means uncommon in English societ3^ Mrs. 
Hornb3' Madox comes into her fortune of ten thousand a 3-ear — 
wishes to be presented in the London world, having lived in the 
country previously — spares no expense to make her house and 
festival as handsome as ma3' be, and gets Lad3^ Fugleman to 
ask the compan3' for her — not the honest Hornb3'S, not the 
famil3' Madoxes, not the jolly old squires and friends and rela- 
tives of her family, and from her county ; but the London 
dandies and the London societ3' : whose names 3'ou see chroni- 
cled at ever}' party, and who, being Lady Fugleman's friends, 
are invited by her ladyship to Mrs. Hornb3''s house. 

What a strange notion of society does this give — of friend- 



IN LONDON. 343 

ship, of fashion, of what people will do to be in the fashion ! 
Poor Mrs. Hornby comes into her fortune, and says to her old 
friends and famil}^, " Mj^ good people, I am going to cut every 
one of you. You were very well as long as we were in the 
countr}', where 1 might have ray natural likings and affections. 
But henceforth I am going to let Lady Fugleman choose m}' 
friends for me. I know nothing about you any more. I have 
no objection to you, but if 3'Ou want to know me you must ask 
Lad}^ Fugleman : if she says yes, I shall be delighted ; if no, 
Bon jour.''' 

This strange business goes on daily in London. Honest 
people do it, and think not the least harm. The proudest and 
noblest do not think the}' demean themselves by crowding 
to Mrs. Goldcalf s parties, and strike quite openly a union 
between her wealth and their titles, to determine as soon as 
the former ceases. There is not the least hypocrisy about this 
at any rate — the terms of the bargain are quite understood 
on every hand. 

But oh, Bob ! see what an awful thing it is to confess, and 
would not even hypocrisy be better than this daring cynicism, 
this open heartlessness — Godlessness I had almost called it ? 
Do you mean to sa}', jo\x great folks, that your object in 
society is not love, is not friendship, is not family union and 
affection — is not truth and kindness; — is not generous sym- 
pathy and union of Christian (pardon me the word, but I can 
indicate m}' meaning by no other) — of Christian men and 
women, parents and children, — but that you assemble and 
meet together, not caring or trjing to care for one another, — 
without a pretext of good-will — with a daring selfishness 
openly avowed?- I am sure I wish Mrs. Goldcalf or the other 
lady no harm, and have never spoken to, or set eyes on either 
of them, and I do not mean to say, Mr. Robert, that you and 
I are a whit better than they are, and doubt whether the}" have 
made the calculation for themselves of the consequences of 
what the}' are doing. But as sure as two and two make four, 
a person giving up of his own accord his natural friends and 
relatives, for the sake of the fashion, seems to me to sa}', I 
acknowledge myself to be heartless ; I turn my back on my 
friends, I disown my relatives, and I dishonor my father and 
mother. 



344 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 



A WORD ABOUT DINNERS. 

English Societ}', my beloved Bob, has this eminent advan- 
tage over all other — that is, if there be any society left in the 
wretched distracted old European continent — that it is above 
all others a dinner-giving society. A people like the Germans, 
that dines habitually, and with what vast appetite 1 need not 
say, at one o'clock in the afternoon — like the Italians, that 
spends its evenings in opera-boxes — like the French, that amuses 
itself of niglits with eau sucree and intrigue — cannot, believe 
me, understand Society rightly. I love and admire my nation 
for its good sense, its manUness, its friendliness, its morality in 
the main — and these, 1 take it, are all expressed in that noble 
institution T the dinner. 

The dinner is the happy end of the Briton's day. We work 
harder than the other nations of the earth. We do more, we 
live more in our time, than Frenchmen or Germans. Every 
great man amongst us likes his dinner, and takes to it kindly. 
1 could mention the most august names of poets, statesmen, 
philosophers, historians, judges, and divines, who are great at the 
dinner-table as in the field, the closet, the senate, or the bench. 
Gibbon mentions that he wrote the first two volumes of his 
history whilst a placeman in London, lodging in St. James's, 
going to the House of Commons, to the Club, and to dinner 
every dav. The man flourishes under that generous and robust 
regimen ; the healthy energies of societ}* are kept up by it ; our 
friendly intercourse is maintained ; our intellect ripens with the 
good cheer, and throws off surprising crops, like the fields about 
Edinburgh, under the influence of that admii'able liquid, Claret. 
The best wines are sent to this country therefore ; for no other 
deserves them as ours does. 

1 am a diner-out, and live in London. I protest, as I look 
back at the men and dinners 1 have seen in the last week, my 
mind is filled with manly respect and pleasure. How good the}^ 
have been ! how admirable the entertainments ! how worthy the 
men ! 

Let me, without divulging names, and with a cordial gi*ati- 
tude, mention a few of those whom 1 have met and who have all 
done their dutv. 

Sir, I have sat at table with a great, a world-renowned 



^ m LONDOK. 345 

statesman. I watched him during the progress of the banquet 
— 1 am at Hberty to say that he enjoyed it iil^e a man. 

On another day, it was a celebrated literary character. It 
was beautiful to see him at his dinner : cordial and generous, 
jovial and kindl}', the great author enjoyed himself as the great 
statesman — may he long give us good books and good dinners ! 

Yet another day, and 1 sat opposite to a Right Reverend 
Bishop. My Lord, I was pleased to see good thing after good 
thing disappear before you ; and think no man ever better be- 
came that rounded episcopal apron. How amiable he was! 
how kind ! He put water into his wine. Let us respect the 
moderation of the Church. 

And then the men learned in the law : how the}' dine ! what 
hospitalit}', what splendor, what comfort, what wine ! As we 
walked away very gently in the moonlight, onl}^ three days 

since, from the 's, a friend of my 3outh and myself, we 

coukl hardl.v speak for gratitude : '' Dear sir," we breathed fer- 
vently, " ask us soon again." One never has too much at those 
perfect banquets — no hideous headaches ensue, or horrid reso- 
lutions about adopting Revalenta Arabica for the future — but 
contentment with all the world, light slumbering, joyful waking 
to grapple with the morrow's work. Ah, dear Bob, those law- 
yers have great merits. There is a dear old judge at whose" 
familv table if I could see vou seated, my desire in life would 
be pretty nearly fulfilled. If you make yourself agreeal)le there, 
3'ou will be in a fair wa}' to get on in the world. But you are 
a youtii still. Youths go to balls : men go to dinners. 

Doctors, again, notoriousl}" eat well ; when my excellent 
friend Sangrado takes a bumper, and saying, with a shrug 
and a twinkle of his eye, '' Video meliora prohnque, deter iora 
seqiior^'" tosses ott' the wine, I alwa3's ask the butler for a glass 
of that bottle. 

The inferior clergy, likewise, dine very much and well. I 
don't know when I ha\'e been better entertained, as tar as 
creature comfoj'ts go, than by men of very Low Church princi- 
ples ; and one of tlie ver}' best repasts that ever I saw in ni}'' 
life was at Darlington, given by a Quaker. 

Some of the best wine in London is given to his friends by a 
poet of my acquaintance. All artists are notoriously fond of 
dinners, and invite you, but not so profusely. Newspaper- 
editors delight in dinners on Saturdays, and give them, thanks 
to the present position of Literature, very often and good. 
Dear Bob, I have seen the mahoganies of many men. 

Every evening between seven and eight o'clock, I like to 



346 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

look at the men dressed for dinner, perambulating the western 
districts of our cit3\ I like to see the smile on their counte- 
nances lighted up with an indescribable self-importance and 
good-humor ; the askance glances which the}' cast at the little 
street-boys and foot-passengers who eye their shin}' boots ; the 
daint}^ manner in which they trip over the pavement on those 
boots, eschewing the mud-pools and dirt}^ crossings ; the re- 
freshing whiteness of their linen ; the coaxing twiddle which 
the}' give to the ties of their white chokers — the caress of a 
fond parent to an innocent child. 

I like walking myself. Those who go in cabs or broughams, 
I haA^e remarked, ha^e not the same radiant expression which 
the pedestrian exhibits. A man in his own brougham has 
anxieties about the stepping of his horse, or the squaring of 
the groom's elbows, or a doubt whether Jones's turn-out is not 
better ; or whether something is not wrong in*the springs ; or 
whether he shall have the brougham out if the night is rainy. 
They always look tragical behind the glasses. A cab diner-out 
has commonly some cares, lest his sense of justice should be 
injured by the overcharge of the driver (these fellows are not 
uncommonly exorbitant in their demands upon gentlemen whom 
they set down at good houses) ; lest the smell of tobacco left 
by the last occupants of the vehicle (five medical students, let us 
say, who have chartered the vehicle, and smoked cheroots from 
the London University to the play-house in the Haymarket) 
should infest the clothes of Tom Lavender who is going to 
Lady Rosemary's ; lest straws should stick unobserved to the 
glutinous lustre of his boots — his shiny ones, and he should 
appear in Dives's drawing-room like a poet with a tenui avend, 
or like Mad Tom in the play. I hope, my dear Bob, if a straw 
should ever enter a drawing-room in the wake of your boot, 
you will not be much disturbed in mind. Hark ye, in confi- 
dence ; I have seen * in a hack-cab. There is no harm in 

employing one. There is no harm in anything natural, any 
more. 

I cannot help here parenthetically relating a story which 
occurred in my own youth, in the year 1815, at the time when 
I first made my own entree into society (for everything must 
have a beginning. Bob ; and though we have been gentlemen 
long before the Conqueror, and have always consorted with 
gentlemen, yet we had not always attained that haute volee of 
fashion which has distinguished some of us subsequently) ; 1 

* Mr. Brown's MS. here contains a name of such prodigious dignity 
out of the ** P — r-ge," that we really do not dare to print it. 



IN LONDON. 347 

recollect, I say, in 1815, when the Marquis of Sweetbread was 
good enough to ask me and the late Mr. Ruffles to dinner, to 
meet Prince Schwartzenberg and the Hetman PlatofF. Ruffles 
was a man a good deal about town in those days, and certainl}' 
in very good societ\'. 

I was myself a young one, and thought Ruffles was rather 
inclined to patronize me: which I did not like. "I would 
have you to know, Mr. Ruffles," thought I, " that, after all, a 
gentleman can but be a gentleman ; that though we Browns 
have no handles to our names, we are quite as well-bred as 
some folks who possess those ornaments " — and in fine I deter- 
mined to give him a lesson. So when he called for me in the 
hackney-coach at m}^ lodgings in Swallow Street, and we had 
driven under the porte-cochere of Sweetbread House, where 
two tall and powdered domestics in the uniform of the Sweet- 
breads, viz. a spinach-colored coat, with waistcoat and the rest 
of delicate yellow or melted-butter color, opened the doors of 
the hall — what do 3"ou think, sir, I did? In the presence of 
these gentlemen, who were holding on at the door, I oflTered to 
toss up with Ruffles, heads or tails, who should pay for the 
coach ; and then purposely had a dispute with the poor Jarvey 
about the fare. Ruffles's face of agon}' during this transaction 
I shall never forget. Sir, it was like the Laocoon. Drops of 
perspiration trembled on his pallid brow, and he flung towards 
me looks of imploring terror that would have melted an ogre. 
A better fellow than Ruffles never lived — he is dead long since, 
and I don't mind owning to this harmless little deceit. 

A person of some note — a favorite Snob of mine — I am 
told, when he goes to dinner, adopts what he considers a happy 
artifice, and sends his cab away at the corner of the street ; so 
that the gentleman in livery may not behold its number, or that 
the lord with whom he dines, and about whom he is always 
talking, may not be supposed to know that Mr. Smith came in 
a hack- cab. 

A man who is troubled with a shame like this. Bob, is un- 
worthy of an}^ dinner at all. Such' a man must needs be a 
sneak and a humbug, anxious about the effect which he is to 
produce : uneasy in his mind : a donkey in a lion's skin : a 
small pretender — distracted by doubts and frantic terrors of 
what is to come next. Such a man can be no more at ease in 
his chair at dinner than a man is in the fauteuil at the dentist's 
(unless indeed he go to the admirable Mr. Gilbert in Sufl[blk 
Street, who is dragged into this essay for the benefit of man- 
kind alone, and who, I vow, removes a grinder with so little 



o 



4:3 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 



pnin, that all the world should be made aware of him) — a fel 
low, I say, ashamed of the oi'iguial from which he sprung, of 
the cab in which he drives, awkward, therefore affected and 
unnatural, can never ho[)e or deserve to succeed in society. 

The great comfort of tlie society of great folks is, that they 
do not trouble themselves about your twopenny little person, 
as smaller persons do, but take you for what you are — a man 
kindly and good-natured, or witty and sarcastic, or learned and 
eloquent, or a good vftcontenr, or a very handsome man, (and 
in '15 some of the Browns were — but I am speaking of 11 ve- 
and-thirty N'.ears ago,) or an excellent gorniiuid and judge of 
wines — or what not. Nobody sets you so quickly at your ease 
as a fine oentleman. I have seen more noise made about a 
knight's ladv than about the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe herself: 
and Lady Mountararat, whose fauiil}' dates from the Deluge, 
enters and leaves a room, with her daughters, the lovely Ladies 
Eve and Lilith D'Arc, with much less pretension and in much 
simpler capotes and what-do-you-call-'ems, than Lady de Mogyns 
or Mrs. Shindy, who quit an assembly in a whirlwind as it were, 
•widi trumpets and alarums like a stage king and queen. 

But my pen can ru.i no further, for ray paper is out, and it 
is time to dress for dinner. 



ON SOME OLD CUSTOMS OF THE DINNER-TABLE. 

Of all the sciences which have made a progress in late years, 
I think, dear Bob (to return to the subject from which I parted 
with so much pleasure last week), that the art of dinner-giving 
has made the most delightful and rapid advances. Sir, I main- 
tain, even now with a matured age and appetite, that the 
dinners of this present day are better than those we had in our 
youth, and I can't but be thankful at least once in every day 
for this decided improvement in our civilization. Those who 
remember the usages of five-and-twenty years back will be 
ready, I am sure, to acknowledge this progress. I was turning 
over at the Club yesterday a queer little l)ook written at that 
period, which, I believe, had some authority at the" time, and 
which records some of those customs which obtained, if not in 
good London society, at least in some companies, and parts of 
our islands. Sir, many of these practices seem as antiquated 
now as the usages described in the accounts of Homeric feasts, 



IX LONDON. 349 

or Qneen Elizabeth's banquets and breakfasts. Let ns be happy 
to think thev are o'one. 

The book in question is called "The Maxims of Sir Morgan 
O'Doherty," a queer baronet, who appears to liave lived in the 
first quarter of the century, and whose opinions the antiquarian 
may examine, not without profit — a strange barbarian indeed 
it is, and one wonders that such customs should ever have been 
prevalent in our countr}-. 

Fancy such opinions as these having ever been holden by 
any set of men among us. Maxim 2. — ''It is laid down in 
fashionable life that \'ou must drink Champagi|g after white 

cheeses, watei* after red Ale is to be avoided, in 

case a wet night is to be expected, as should cheese also." 
Maxim 4. — ''A fine singer, after dinner, is to be avoided, for 

he is a great bore, and stops the wine One of the 

best rules (to put him down) is to applaud him most vocifer- 
ously as soon as he has sung the first verse, as if all was over, 
and say to the "entleman farthest from vou at table that you 
admire the conclusion of this song very much." Maxim 25. — 
" Yon meet people occasionally who tell you it is bad taste to 
give Champagne at dinner — Port and Teneriffe being such 
superior drinking," &c. &c. I am copying out of a book printed 
three months since, describing w'ays prevalent when you were 
born. Can it be possible, I sa}*, that England was ever in such 
a state ? 

Was it ever a maxim in "fashionable life" that you were 
to drink cham[)agne after white cheeses? What was that maxim 
in ftishionable lile about drinkino- and about cheese? The 
maxim in fashionable lite is to drink what vou will. It is too 
simple now to trouble itself about wine or about cheese. Ale 
again is to be avoided, this strange Dohert^' says, if you expect 
a wet night — and in another place he says •' the English drink 
a pint of porter at a draugiit." — What English? gracious 
powers ! Are we a nation of coalheavers ? Do we ever have 
a wet night? Do we ever meet people occasionally wdio say 
that to give Champagne at dinner is bad taste, and that Port 
and Teneritfe are such superior drinking? Fancy Teneriffe, 
my dear boy — I say fancy a man asking you to drink Tenerifie 
at dinner; the mind shudders at it — he might as wtU invite 
3'ou to swallow the Peak. 

And then consider the maxim about the fine singer who is 
to be avoided. AViiat ! was there a time in most people's mem- 
or}', when folks at dessert began to sing? I have heard such 
a thing at a tenants' dinner in the country ; but the idea of a 



350 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

fellow beginning to perform a song at a dinner-party in London 
fills m}^ mind with terror and amazement ; and I picture to my- 
self any table which I frequent, in May Fair, in Bloomsbury, in 
Belgravia, or where you will, and the pain which would seize 
upon the host and the company if some wretch were to com- 
mence a song. 

We have passed that savage period of life. We do not want 
to hear songs from guests, we have the songs done for us ; as 
we don't want our ladies to go down into the kitchen and cook 
the dinner any more. The cook can do it better and cheaper. 
We do not desire feats of musical or culinary skill — but simple, 
quiet, easy, unpretending conversation. 

In like manner, there was a practice once usual, and which 
still lingers here and there, of making complimentary speeches 
after dinner ; that custom is happil}' almost entirelj" discontin • 
ued. Gentlemen do not meet to compliment each other pro- 
fusel}', or to make fine phrases. Simplicit}' gains upon us daily. 
Let us be thankful that the florid style is disappearing. 

I once shared a bottle of sherry with a commercial traveller 
at Margate who gave a toast or a sentiment as he filled ever}' 
glass. He would not take his wine without this queer cere- 
mony before it. I recollect one of his sentiments, which was 
as follows : " Year is to 'er that doubles our joj's, and divides 
our sorrows — I give you woman, sir," — and we both emptied 
our glasses. These lumbering ceremonials are passing out 
of our manners, and were found only to obstruct our free in- 
tercourse. People can like each other just as much without 
orations, and be just as merrj- without being forced to drink 
against their will. 

And yet there are certain customs to which one clings still ; 
for instance, the practice of drinking wine with your neighbor, 
though wisel}' not so frequently indulged in as of old, 3'et still 
obtains, and I trust will never be abolished. For though, in 
the old time, when Mr. and Mrs. Fog}' had sixteen friends to 
dinner, it became an unsupportable corvee for Mr. F. to ask 
sixteen persons to drink wine, and a painful task for Mrs. Fogy 
to be called upon to bow to ten gentlemen, who desired to have 
the honor to drink her health, yet, employed in moderation, 
that ancient custom of challenging your friends to drink is a 
kindly and hearty old usage, and productive of many most 
beneficial results. 

I have known a man of a modest and reserved turn, (just 
like your old uncle, dear Bob, as no doubt you were going to 
remark,) when asked to drink by the host, suddenly lighten 



IN LONDON. 351 

up, toss off his glass, get confidence, and begin to talk right 
and left. He wanted but the spur to set him going. It is 
supplied b}' the butler at the back of his chair. 

It sometimes happens, again, that a host's conversational 
powers are not brilliant. I own that I could point out a few 
such whom I have the honor to name among my friends — gen- 
tlemen, in fact, who wisel}^ hold their tongues because they 
have nothing to say which is worth the hearing or the telling, 
and properly confine themselves to the carving of the mutton 
and the ordering of the wines. Such men, manifestly, should 
always be allowed, nay encouraged, to ask their guests to take 
wine. In putting that question, they show their good-will, and 
cannot possiblj' betra}' their mental deficiency. For example, 
let us suppose Jones, who has been perfectly silent all dinner- 
time, oppressed, doubtless, by that awful Lady Tiara, who sits 
swelling on his right hand, suddenly rallies, singles me out, 
and with a loud cheering voice cries, " Brown my boy, a glass 
of wine." I reply, "With pleasure, m}' dear Jones." He re- 
sponds as quick as thought, " Shall it be hock or champagne, 
Brown?" I mention the wine w^hich I prefer. He calls to 
the butler, and sa3^s, " Some champagne or hock " (as the case 
may be, for I don't choose to commit myself), — " some cham- 
pagne or hock to Mr. Brown;" and finally he says, "Good 
health ! " in a pleasant tone. Thus you see, Jones, though not 
a conversationist, has had the opportunity of making no les^ 
than lour observations, which, if not brilliant or witt}', are yet 
manl}^, sensible, and agreeable. And I defy any man in the 
metropolis, be he the most accomplished, the most learned, the 
wisest, or the most eloquent, to say more than Jones upon a 
similar occasion. 

If you have had a difference with a man, and are "desirous 
to make it up, how pleasant it is to take wine with him. Noth- 
ing is said but that simple phrase which has just been uttered 
b}' m}' friend Jones ; and j^et it means a great deal. The cup 
is a sj^mbol of reconciliation. The other party drinks up your 
good-will as you accept his token of returning friendship — and 
thus the liquor is hallowed which Jones has paid for : and I like 
to think that the grape which grew by Rhine or Rhone was born 
and ripened under the sun there, so as to be the means of bring- 
ing two good fellows together. I once heard the head ph}'- 
sician of a Hydropathic establishment on the sunn}^ banks of 
the first-named river, give the health of His Majesty the King 
of Prussia, and, calling upon the campany to receive that 
august toast with a " donnerndes Lebehoch," toss off a bumper 



352 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

of sparkling water. It did not seem to me a genuine enthusi- 
asm. No, no, let us have toast and wine, not toast and water. 
It was not in vain that grapes grew on the hills of Father 

Rhine. 

One seldom asks ladies now to take wine, — except when, 
in a conlidential whisper to the charming creature whom you 
have brought down to dinner, you humbl}- ask permission to 
pledge her, and she delicately touches her glass, with a fas- 
cinating smile, in reply to your glance, — a smile, you rogue, 
which goes to your heart. I say, one does not ask ladies any 
more to take wine : and I think, this custom being abijlishcd, 
the contrary practice should be introduced, and that the ladies 
should ask the gentlemen. I know one who did, vne gmude 
dame de par le moude^ as honest Biautoine phrases it, and fi'om 
whom I deserved no such kindness ; but, sir, the effect of that 
graceful act of hospitality was such, that she made a grateful 
slave for ever of one who was an admiring rebel previoush', 
who would do anything to show his gratitude, and ^^ho now 
knows no greater delight than when he receives a card which 
bears her respected name.* 

A dinner of men is well now and again, but few well-regu- 
lated minds relish a dinner without women. There are some 
wretches w^ho, I believe, still meet together for the sake of what 
is called "the spread," who dine each other round and round, 
and have horrid delights in turtle, early pease, and other culi- 
nary luxuries — but I pity the condition as I avuid the banquets 
of those men. The only substitute for ladies at dinners, or 
consolation for want of them, is — smoking. Cigars, introduced 
with the coffee, do, if anything can, make us forget the absence 
of the other sex. But what a substitute is that for her who 
doubles our joys, and divides our griefs ! for woman ! as mj' 
friend the Traveller said. 



f 



GREAT AND LITTLE DINNERS. 

It has been said, dear Bob, that I have seen the mahoganies 
of many men, and it is with no small feeling of pride and grati- 
tude that I am enabled to declare also, that I hardly remember 
in my life to have had a bad dinner. Would to heaven that all 
mortal men could say likewise I Indeed, and in the presence of 

* Upon my word, Mr. Brown, this is too broad a hint. — Punch. 



IK LONDON. 353 

so mncli want and misery as pass under our ken dail}', it is with a 
feelinji" of something like shame and humiliation that 1 make the 
avowal ; but I have robbed no man of his meal that I kn(jw of, 
and am here speaking ol' very humble as well as very grand 
l^nquets, the which 1 maintain are, when there is a sufficiency, 
almost always good. 

Yes, all dinners are good, from a shilling upwards. The 
plate of boiled beef which Mary, the neat-handed waitress, 
in-ings or used to bring you in the Old Bailey — 1 say used, for, 
ah me ! I speak of years long [)ast, when the cheeks of Mar}' 
were as blooming as the carrots which she brought up with the 
beef, and she may be a granchnother^by this time, or a pallid 
ghost, far ont of the regions of beef; — from the shilling dinner 
of beef and carrots to the grandest banquet of the season — 
everything is good. There are no degrees in eating. 1 mean 
that mutton is as good as venison — beefsteak, if you are hini- 
^yy, as good as turtle — l)ottled ale, if you like it, to the full as 
good as cham[)agne ; — there is no delicacy in the world which 
Monsieur Francatelli or Monsieur So^er can produce, which I 
believe to be better than toasted cheese. I have seen a dozen 
/ of epicures at a grand table forsake every P'^rench and Italian 
delicacy for boiled leg of pork and pease-pudding. You can 
but be hungry, and eat and be happy. 

What is the moral I would deduce from this truth, if truth 
it be? I would have a great deal more hospitality practised 
than is common among us — more hospitality and less show. 
Propei'ly considered, the quality of dinner is twice blest; it 
blesses him that gives, and him that takes : a dinner with 
friendliness is the best of all friendly meetings — a pompous 
entertainment where no love is, the least satisfactory. 

Why, then, do Ave of the middle classes persist in giving 
entertainments so costly, and beyond our means? This will 
be read by many mortals, who are aware that they live on leg 
of mutton themselves, or worse than this, have what are called 
meat teas, than wiiich I cannot conceive a more odious custom ; 
that ordinarily they are very sober in their way of life ; that 
they like in reality that leg of mutton better tlian the condi- 
ments of that doubtful French artist who comes from the pastry- 
cook's, and presides over the mysterious stewpans in the kitchen ; 
why, then, on their company dinners, should they flare up in 
the magnificent manner in which they universally do? 

Kvervbodv has the same dinner in London, and the same 
soup, saddle of mutton, boiled fowls and tongue, enirees, cham- 
pagne, and so forth. I own myself to being no better ijor 

23 



354 SKETCHES AKD TRAVELS 

worse than m}^ neighbors in this respect, and rush off to the 
confectioners' for sweets, &c. ; hire sham butlers and attend- 
ants ; have a fellow going round the table with still and dry 
champagne, as if I knew his name, and it was m}^ custom to 
drink those wines ever}^ da}'^ of m}^ life. I am as bad as m^ 
neighbors: but wh}' are we so bad, I ask? — why are we not 
more reasonable? 

If we receive very great men or ladies at our houses, I will 
la}' a wager that they will select mutton and gooseberrj' tart for 
their dinner : forsaking the entrees which the men in white 
Berlin gloves are handing round in the Birmingham plated 
dishes. Asking lords and ladies, who have great establish- 
ments of their own, to French dinners and delicacies, is like 
inviting a grocer to a meal of figs, or a pastry-cook to a banquet 
of raspberry tarts. They have had enough of them. And 
great folks, if the}^ like you, take no count of j^our feasts, and 
grand preparations, and can but eat mutton like men. 

One cannot have sumptuar}' laws now-a-daj^s, or restrict the 
gastronomical more than an}' other trade : but I wish a check 
could be put upon our dinner extravagances b}' some means, 
and am confident that the pleasures of life would greatl}^ be 
increased b}' moderation. A man might give two dinners for 
one, according to the present pattern. Half 3'our mone}' is 
swallowed up in a dessert, which nobod}' wants in the least, 
and which I always grudge to see arriving at the end of plent}'. 
Services of culinar}- kickshaws swallow up mone}', and give no- 
bod}' pleasure , except the pastry-cook , whom they enrich . Every- 
body entertains as if he had three or four thousand a year. 

Some one with a voice potential should cry out against this 
overwhelming luxury. What is mere decency in a very wealthy 
man is absurdity — nay, wickedness in a poor one : a frog by 
nature, I am an insane, silly creature, to attempt to swell my- 
self to the size of the ox, my neighbor. Oh, that I could 
establish in the middle classes of London an Anti-entree and 
Anti-Dessert movement! I would go down to posterity not ill- 
deserving of my country in such a case, and might be ranked 
among the social benefactors. Let us have a meeting at WiUis's 
Rooms, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the purpose, and get a few 
philanthropists, philosophers, and bishops, or so, to speak ! As 
people, in former days, refused to take sugar, let us get up a 
society which shall decline to eat dessert and made dishes.* 

* Mr. Brown here enumerates three entries, which he confesses he can- 
not resist, and likewise preserved cherries at dessert : but the principle i» 
good, though the man is weaJt. 



IN LONDOIT. 355 

In this wa\', I sa}', every man who now gives a dinner might 
give two ; and take in a host of poor friends and relatives, who 
are now exchided from his hospitaUty. For dinners are given 
mostly in the middle classes by way of revenge ; and Mr. and 
Mrs. Thompson ask Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, because the latter 
have asked them. A man at this rate who gives four dinners 
of twenty persons in the course of the season, each dinner cost- 
ing him something very near upon thirty pounds, receives in 
return, we will sa}', forty dinners from the friends whom he has 
himself invited. That is, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson pa}- a hundred 
and twent}' pounds, as do all their friends, for forty-four din- 
ners of which the}' partake. So that they may calculate that 
ever}' time they dine with their respective friends, they pay 
about twenty-eight shillings per tete. What a sum this is, dear 
Johnson, for you and me to spend upon our waistcoats ! What 
does poor Mrs. Johnson care for all these garish splendors, who 
has had her dinner at two with her dear children in the nursery ? 
Our custom is not hospitality or pleasure, but to be able to cut 
c^fT a certain number of acquaintance from the dining list. 

One of these dinners of twenty, again, is scarcely ever 
pleasant as far as regards society. You may chance to get 
near a pleasant neighbor and neighboress, when your corner of 
the table is possibly comfortable. But there can be no general 
conversation. Twenty people cannot engage together in talk. 
You would want a speaking-trumpet to communicate from your 
place by the lady of the house (for I wish to give my respected 
reader the place of honor) to the lady at the opposite corner at 
the right of the host. If you have a joke or a mot to make, you 
cannot utter it before such a crowd. A joke is nothing which 
can only get a laugh out of a third part of the company. The 
most eminent wags of my acquaintance are dumb in these great 
parties ; and your raconteur or story-teller, if he is prudent, will 
invariably hold his tongue. For what can be more odious than 
to be compelled to tell a story at the top of your voice, to be 
called on to repeat it for the benefit of a distant person who 
has only heard a part of the anecdote ? There are stories of 
mine which would fail utterly, were they narrated in any but 
an undertone ; others in which I laugh, am overcome by emo- 
tion, and so forth — what I call my intimes stories. Now it is 
impossible to do justice to these except in the midst of a general 
hush, and in a small circle ; so that I am commonly silent. 
And as no anecdote is positively new in a party of twenty, the 
chances are so much against you that somebody should have 
heard the story before, in which case you are done. 



356 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

In these large assemblies, a wit, then, is of no use, and does 
not liave a eliance : a raconteur does not get a fair hearing, and 
both of these real ornaments of a dinner-table are thus utterly 
thrown away. 1 have seen Jack Jolliffe, who can keep a table 
of eight or ten persons in a roar of laughter for four hours, 
remain utterly mute in a great entertainment, smothered by 
the numbers and the dowager on each side of him: and Tom 
Yarnold,' the most eminent of conversationists, sit through a 
dinner as dumb as the footman behind him. Thej* do not care 
to joke, unless there is a sympathizing society, and prefer to be 
silent rather than throw their good things awaj'. 

What I would recommend, then, with all my power, is, that 
dinners should be more simple, more frequent, and should con- 
tain fewer persons. Ten is the utmost number that a man of 
moderate means should ever invite to his table ; althouoh in a 
great house, managed l)y a great establishment, the case ma3' 
be dirterent. A man and woman may look as if the}* were glad 
to see ten people : but in a great dinner the}' abdicate their 
position as host and hostess, — are mere creatures in the hands 
of the sham butlers, sham footmen, and tall confectioners' emis- 
saries wlio crowd the room, — and are guests at their own 
table, where the}* are helped last, and of which they occupy the 
top and bottom. I have marked many a lady watching with 
timid glances the large artificial major-domo^ who officiates fpr 
that nigiit only, and thought to myself, " Ah, my dear madam, 
how much liappier migiit we all be if there were but half the 
splendor, half the made dishes, and half the company' as- 
sembled." 

If any dinner-giving person who reads this shall be induced 
by my representations to pause in his present career, to cut off 
some of the luxuries of his table, and instead of giving one 
enormous feast to twenty persons to have three simple dinners 
for ten, my dear Nephew will not have been addressed in vain. 
Everybody will be bettered ; and while the guests will be better 
pleased, and more numerous, the host will actually be left with 
money in his pocket. 



IN LONDON. S57 



ON LOVE, MARRIAGE, MEN, AND WOMEN. 

I. 

BoR Brown is in love, then, and undergoing the common 
lot! And so, rav dear lad, von are this moment enduring the 
delights and tortures, the jealous}' and waketlihiess, the long- 
ing and raptures, the frantic despair and elation, attendant 
upon the passion of love. In the year 1812 (it was before I 
contracted my alliance with your poor dear Aunt, who never 
caused ro.e any of the disquietudes above enumerated,) I my- 
self went through some of those miseries and pleasures which 
you now, O my Nephew, are enduring. I pity and sympathize 
with you. I am an old cock now, with a feeble strut and a 
faltering crow. But I was .young once : and remember the 
time very well. Since that time, amavi amantes : if I see two 
young people happy, I like it, as I like to see children enjoying 
a pantomime. I have been the confidant of numbers of honest 
fellows, and the secret watcher of scores of little pretty in- 
trigues in life. Miss Y., 1 know why you go so eagerly to 
balls now, and Mr. Z., what has set 3'ou off dancing at 3'our 
mature age. Do you fancy, Mrs. Al[)ha, that I believe you 
walk every day at half-past eleven by the Serpentine for noth- 
ing, and that I don't see young O'Mega in Rotten Row ? . . . 
And so, m}' poor Bob, you are shot. 

If you lose the object of your desires, the loss won't kill 
you ; vou mav set that down as a certaintv. If you win, it is 
possible that you will be disappointed ; that point also is to be 
considered. But hit or miss, good luck or bad — I should be 
sorrv, my honest Bob, that thou didst not underi2:o the maladv. 
Ever}' man ought to be in love a few times in his life, and to haVe 
a smart attack of the fevei*. You are the better for it when it 
is over: the better for your misfortune if vou endure it with a 
manlv heart ; how much the better for success if you win it and 
a good wife into the bargain ! Ah! Bob — there is a stone in 
the burying-ground at Funchal which I often and often think of 
— many hopes and passions lie beneath it, along with the fair- 
est and gentlest creature in the world — it's not Mrs. Brown that 
lies there. After life's fitful fever, she sleeps in Marylebone 
burying-grojmd, poor dear soul ! Emily Blenkinsop m/(/ht have 
been Mrs. Brown, but — but let us change the subject. 

Of course you will take advice, my dear Bob, about your 



3a8 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

flame. All men and women do. It is notorious that the}^ lis- 
ten to the opinions of all their friends, and never follow their 
own counsel. Well, tell us about this girl. What are her 
quahfications, expectations, belongings, station in life, and so 
forth? 

About beauty I do not argue. I take it for granted. A 
man sees beaut}-, or that which he likes, with e3'es entirely his 
own. I don't say that plain women get husbands as readily as 
the pretty girls — but so man}' handsome girls are unmarried, 
and so man}' of the other sort wedded, that there is no possi- 
bility of establishing a rule, or of setting up a standard. Poor 
dear Mrs. Brown was a far finer woman than Emily Blenkin- 
sop, and yet I loved Emily's little finger more than the whole 
hand which your Aunt Martha gave me — I see the plainest 
women exercising the greatest fascinations over men, — in 
fine, a man falls in love with a w^oman because it is fate, be- 
cause she is a woman ; Bob, too, is a man, and endowed with 
a heart and a beard. 

Is she a clever woman ? I do not mean to disparage you, 
my good fellow, but you are not a man that is likely to set the 
Thames on fire ; and I should rather like to see you fall to the 
lot of a clever woman. A set has been made against clever 
women in all times. Take all Shakspeare's heroines — they 
all seem to me pretty much the same — affectionate, motherly, 
tender, that sort of thing. Take Scott's ladies, and other 
writers' — each man seems to draw from one model — an ex- 
quisite slave is what we. want for the most part; a humble, 
flattering, smiling, child-loving, tea-making, pianoforte-play- 
ing being, who laughs at our jokes, however old they may be, 
coaxes and wheedles us in our humors, and fondly lies to us 
through life. I never could get your poor Aunt into this sys- 
tem, though I confess 1 should have been a happier man had 
she tried it. 

There are many more clever women in the world than men 
think for. Our habit is to despise them ; we believe they do 
not think because they do not contradict us ; and are weak be- 
cause they do not struggle and rise up against us. A man 
only begins to know women as he gi'ows old ; and for my part 
my opinion of their cleverness rises every day. 

When I say I know women, I mean I know that I don't 
know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to 
me, as I have no doubt she is to herself. Say they are not 
clever? Their hypocrisy is a perpetual marvel to me, and a 
constant exercise of cleverness of the finest sort. You see ^ 



m LONDON. 359 

demure-looking woman perfect in all her duties, constant in 
house-bills and shirt-buttons, obedient to her lord, and anxious 
to please him in all things ; silent when you and he talk poli- 
tics, or literature, or balderdash together, and if referred to, 
sajing, with a smile of perfect humilitj', "Oh, women are not 
judges upon such and such matters ; we leave learning and poli- 
tics to men." " Yes, poor Polly," says Jones, patting the back 
of Mrs. J.'s head good-naturedl}^ " attend to the house, my 
.dear; that's the best thing you can do, and leave the rest to 
us." Benighted idiot ! She has long ago taken j'our measure 
and 3'our friends' ; she knows 3'our weaknesses, and ministers 
to them in a thousand artful wa3's. She knows 3'our obstinate 
points, and marches round them with the most curious art and 
patience, as you will see an ant on a journe3' turn round an 
obstacle. Every woman manages her husband : ever3^ person 
who manages another is a h3^pocrite. Her smiles, her submis- 
sion, her good-humor, for all which we value her, — what are 
they but admirable duplicit3^? We expect falseness from her, 
and order and educate her to be dishonest. Should he upbraid, 
I'll own that he prevail ; say that he frown, I'll answer with a 
smile ; — what are these but lies, that we exact from our slaves ? 
— lies, the dexterous performance of which we announce to be 
the female virtues : brutal Turks that we are ! I do not sa3' 
that Mrs. Brown ever obe3'ed me — on the contrar3^ : but I 
should have liked it, for I am a Turk like my neighbor. 

I will instance 3^our mother now. When my brother comes 
in to dinner after a bad da3' 's sport, or after looking over the bills 
of some of 3^ou bo3's, he naturall3' begins to be surly with 3^our 
poor dear mother, and to growl at the mutton. What does she 
do ? She may be hurt, but she doesn't show it. She proceeds to 
coax, to smile, to turn the conversation, to stroke down Bruin, 
and get him in a good-humor. She sets him on his old stories, 
and she and all the girls — poor dear little Sapphiras ! — set off 
laughing ; there is that story about the Goose walking into church, 
which your father tells and 3'our mother and sisters laugh at, until 
I protest I am so ashamed that I hardly know where to look. On 
he goes with that story time after time : and 3'Our poor mother 
sits there and knows that I know she is a humbug, and laughs on ; 
and teaches all the girls to laugh too. Had that dear creature 
been born to wear a nose-ring and bangles instead of a muff and 
bonnet ; and had she a brown skin in the place of that fair one 
with which nature has endowed her, she would have done Suttee, 
after 3'Our brown Brahmin father had died, and thought women 
very irreligious too, who refused to roast themselves for their 



360 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

masters and lords. I do not mean to sa}' that the late Mrs. 
Brown would have gone through the proeess of incremation for 
me — far from it: b\' a timely removal she was spared from 
the grief whicli her widowhood would have doubtless caused 
her, and I acquiesce in the decrees of Fate in this instance, and 
have not the least desire to have preceded her. 

I hope the ladies will not take my remarks in ill part. If 
I die for it, I must own that I don't think they have fair pla}'. 
In the bargain we make with them I don't think they get their 
rigiits. And as a laborer notoriousl}- does more by the piece 
than he does by the day, and a free man works harder than a 
slave, so I doubt whether we get the most out of our women bj' 
enslaving them as we do by law and custom. There are some 
folks who would limit the range of women's duties to little more 
than a kitchen range — others who like tliem to administer to 
our delectation in a ball-room, and permit them to display 
dimpled shoulders and flowing ringlets — ^^just as you have one 
horse for a mill, and another for the Park. But in whatever 
way we like them, it is for our use somehow that we have 
women brought up ; to work for us, or to shine for us, or to 
dance for us, or what not ? It would not have been thought shame 
of our fathers fifty years ago, that they could not make a custard 
or a pie, but our mothers would have been rebuked had they been 
ignorant on these matters. Why should not you and I be asiiamed 
now because we cannot make our own shoes, or cut out our own 
breeches? We know better: we can get cobblers and tailors 
to do that — and it was we who made the laws for women, who, 
we are in the habit of saying, are not so clever as we are. 

My dear Nephew, as I grow old and consider these things, 
I know which are the stronger, men or women ; but which are 
the cleverer, I doubt. 

II. 

Loxcr years ago, indeed it was at the Peace of Amiens, when 
with several other young bucks I was making the grand tour, I 
recollect how sweet we all of us were upon the lovely Duchess 
of Montepulclano at Naples, who, to be sure, was not niggardly 
of her smiles in return. There came a man amongst us, how- 
ever, from London, a very handsome young fellow, with such 
an air of fascin.ating melancholy in his looks, that he cut out 
all the other suitors of the Duchess in the course of a week, and 
would have mairied her very likely, but that war was declared 
while this youth was still hankering about his Princess, and he 
was sent off to Verdun, whence he did not emerge for twelve 



IX LONDON. 361 

3*ears, and until he was as fat as a porpoise, and the Dnchess 
was long since married to General Count Raff, one of the Em- 
peror's heroes. 

1 mention poor Tibbits to show the curious difference of 
manner whicii exists among us ; and which, though not visible 
to foreigners, is instantly understood by English people. Brave, 
clever, tall, slim, dark, and sentimental-looking, he passed 
muster in a foreign saloon, and, as I must own to you. cut us 
fellows out: whereas we English knew^ instantly that the man 
was not well bred, bj* a thousand little signs not to be understood 
by the foreigner. In his early youth, for instance, he had been 
cruelly de[)rived of his Ws by his parents, and though he tried 
to replace them in after life, they were no more natural than a 
glass eye, but stared at you as it were in a ghastly manner out 
of the conversation, and pained nou by their horrid intrusions. 
Not acquainted with these refinements of our language, for- 
eigners did not understand what Tibbits's eriors were, and 
d(Hibtless thought it was from env}- that we conspired to slight 
the poor fellow. 

I mention Mr. Tibbits, because he was handsome, clever, 
honest, and brave, and in almost all respects our superior; and 
3'et labored under disadvantages of manner which unfitted him 
for certain societ}-. It is not Tibbits the man, it is not Tibbits 
the citizen, of whom I would wish to speak lightly ; his moials, 
his reading, his courage, his generosity, his talents are un- 
doubted — it is the social Tibbits of whom I speak : and as 
I do not 2:0 to balls, because I do not dance, or to meeting's of 
the Political Economy Club, or other learned associations, be- 
cause taste and education have not fitted me for the pursuits for 
which other persons are adapted, so Tibbits's sphere is not in 
drawing-rooms, where the /?, and other points of etiquette, are 
rigorously maintained. 

I say thus much because one or two people have taken some 
remarks of mine in ill part, and hinted that I am a Tory in dis- 
guise : and an ai'istocrat that should be hung up to a lamp-post. 
Not so, dear Bob ; — there is nothing like the truth, about 
whomsoever it ma}* be. I mean no more disrespect towards 
any fellow-man by saying that he is not what is called in Society 
well bred, than by stating that he is not tall or short, or that 
he cannot dance, or that he does not know Hebrew-, or whatever 
the case may be. I mean that if a man works with a pickaxe or 
shovel all day, his hands will be iiarder tlian those of a lady of 
fashion, and that his opinion about Madame Sontag's singing, or 
the last new novel, will not probably be of much value. And 



362 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS. 

though I own my conviction that there are some animals which 
frisk advantageously' in ladies' drawing-rooms, whilst others 
pull stoutly at the plough, I do not most certainl}' mean to re- 
flect upon a horse for not being a lap-dog, or see that he has 
any cause to be ashamed that he is other than a horse. 

And, in a word, as you are what is called a gentleman your- 
self, I hope that Mrs. Bob Brown, whoever she ma}' be, is not 
onl}' by nature, but b}^ education, a gentlewoman. No man 
ought ever to be called upon to blush for his wife. I see good 
men rush into marriage with ladies of whom thej' are afterwards 
ashamed ; and in the same manner charming women linked to 
partners, whose vulgarit}' they try to screen. Poor Mrs. Boti- 
bol, what a constant h3'pocris3' 3'our life is, and how 3'ou insist 
upon informing ever3'bod3' that Botibol is the best of men ! 
Poor Jack Jinkins ! what a female is that 3'Ou brought back 
from Baofnio-ofe Wells to introduce to London societv ! a hand- 
some, tawdr3', flaunting, watering-place belle ; a boarding-house 
beauty : tremendous in brazen ornaments and cheap finer3\ 

If3'ou marr3^, dear Bob, I hope Mrs. Robert B. will be a 
lady not ver3' much above or below 3'our own station. 

I would sooner that 3'ou should promote 3'our wife than thai 
she should advance 3'ou. And though every man can point 3'Ou 
out instances where his friends have been married to ladies of 
superior rank, who have accepted their new position with per- 
fect grace, and made their husbands entirel3' happ3' ; as there are 
examples of maid-servants decorating coronets, and sempstresses 
presiding worthil3' over Baronial Halls ; 3'et I hope Mrs. Robert 
Brown will not come out of a palace or a kitchen : but out of a 
house something like yours, out of a famil3^ something like 
3^ours, with a snug jointure something like that modest portion 
which I dare say 3'ou will inherit. 

I remember when Arthur Rowdy (who I need not tell 3'ou 
belongs to the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy & Co., of Lombard 
Street, Bankers,) married Lady Cleopatra ; what a grand match 
it was thought by the Rowdy family : and how old Mrs. Rowdy 
in Portman Square was elated at the idea of her son's new con- 
nection. Her daughters were to go to all the parties in London ; 
and her house was to be filled with the very greatest of great 
folks. We heard of nothing but dear Lad3^ Stonehenge from 
morning till night ; and the old frequenters of the house were 
perfectl3^ pestered with stories of dear Lady Zenobia and dear 
Lad3^ Corneha, and of the dear Marquis, whose masterly trans- 
lation of Cornelius Nepos had placed him among the most 
learned of our nobility 



IN LONDON. 363 

When Rowdy went to live in May Fair, what a wretched 
house it was into which he introduced such of his friends as 
were thought worth}" of presentation to his new societj^ ! The 
rooms were filled with young dandies of the Stonehenge con- 
nection — beardless bucks from Downing Street, gay young 
sprigs of the Guards — their sisters and mothers, their kith 
and kin. The}' overdrew their accounts at Rowdy's Bank, and 
laughed at him in his drawing-room ; they made their bets and 
talked their dandy talk over his claret, at which the poor fel- 
low sat quite silent. Lady Stoneheijge invaded his nursery, 
appointed and cashiered his governess and children's maids ; 
established her apothecary in permanence over him : quarrelled 
with old Mrs. Rowdy, so that the poor old body was only al- 
lowed to see her grandchildren by stealth, and have secret 
interviews with them in the garden of Berkeley Square ; made 
Rowdy take villas at Tunbridge, which she filled with her own 
family ; massacred her daughter's visitiug-book, in the which 
Lady Cleopatra, a good-natured woman, at first admitted some 
of her husband's relatives and acquaintance ; and carried him 
abroad upon excursions, in which all he had to do was to settle 
the bills with the courier. And she went so far as to order 
him to change his side of the House and his politics, and adopt 
those of Lord Stonehenge, which were of the age of the Druids, 
his lordship's ancestors ; but here the honest British merchant 
made a stand and conquered his mother-in-law, who would 
have smothered him the other day for voting for Rothschild. 
If it were not for the Counting House in the morning and the 
House of Commons at night, what would become of Rowdy? 
They say he smokes there, and drinks when he smokes. He 
has been known to go to Vauxhall, and has even been seen, 
with a comforter over his nose, listening to Sam Hall at the 
Cider Cellars. All this misery and misfortune came to the 
poor fellow for marr}'fng out of his degree. The clerks at 
Lombard Street laugh when Lord Mistletoe steps out of his 
cab and walks into the bank-parlor ; and Rowdy's private 
account invariably tells tales of the visit of his young scape- 
grace of a brother-in-law. 



m. 

Let us now, beloved and ingenuous youth, take the other 
side of the question, and discourse a little while upon the state 
of that man who takes unto himself a wife inferior to him in 



364 SKETCHES AXD TRAVELS 

deoree. I have before me in nij' acquaintance many most 
piiTable instances of incUviduals who have made this fatal 

mistake. 

Although old fellows are as likel}' to be made fools as 3'oung 
in love matters, and Dan Cupid has no respect for the most 
venerable age, yet I remark that it is generally the young men 
•who marry vulgar wives. They are on a reading tour for the 
Long Vacation, they are quai'tered at Ballinafad, they see Miss 
Smith or Miss O'Shaughnessy every day. healthy, lively, J0II3' 
girls with red cheeks, bright eyes, and high spirits — they come 
away at the end of the vacation, or when the regiment changes 
its quarters, engaged men, family rows ensue, mothers cry out, 
papas grumble, Miss pines and loses her health at Bayraouth 
or Ballinafad — consent is got at last, Jones takes his degree, 
Jenkins gets his company ; Miss Smith and Miss O'Shaugh- 
nessy become Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Jenkins. 

For the first year it is all very well. Mrs. Jones is a great 
bouncing handsome creature, lavishly fond of her adored Jones, 
and caring for no other company but his. Thev have a cot- 
tage at Bayswater. He w'alks her out every evening. He sits 
and reads the last new novel to her whilst she works slippers 
for him, or makes some little tiny caps, and — dear Julia, dear 
Edward ! — thev are all in all to one another. 

Old Mrs. Smith of course comes up from Swansea at the 
time when the little caps arc put into requisition, and takes 
possession of the cottage at Bayswater. Mrs. Jones Senior 
calls upon Mrs. Edward Jones's mamma, and, of course, is 
desirous to do evervthino- that is civil to the familv of Edward's 
wife. 

Mrs. Jones finds in the mother-in-law of her Edward a large 
woman with a cotton umbrella, who dines in the middle of the 
day, and has her beer, and who calls Mrs. Jones Mum. What 
a state they are in in Pocklington Sc|«iare about this woman ! 
How can they be civil to her? AVhom can they ask to meet 
her? How the girls, Edward's sisters, go on about her! 
Fanny sa3-s she ought to be shown to the housekeeper's room 
when she calls ; Mary proposes that Mrs. Shay, the washer- 
woman, should be invited on the day when Mrs. Smith comes 
to dinner; and Emma (who was Edward's favorite sister, and 
who considers herself jilted by his marriage with Julia,) i^oints 
out the most dreadful thing of all, that lilrs. Smith and Julia 
are exactlv alike, and that in a few vears Mrs. Edward Jones 
vriil be the very image of that great enormous unwieldy horrid 
old woman. 



IX LONDON. 365 

Closeted with her daughter, of whom and of her baby she 
lias taken possession, Mrs. Smith gives her opinion about the 
Joneses : — Tlie3' may be very good, but the}' are too tine ladies 
for her ; and the}' evidently think she is not good enough for 
them: they arc sad worldly people, and have never sat under 
a good minister, that is clear : the}- talked French before her 
on the dav sh3 called in Pocklin"ton Gardens, '•'• and thouoh 
they were laughing at me, I'm sure I can pardon them," Mrs. 
Smith says. Edward and Julia have a little altercation about 
the manner in which his family has treated Mi"s. Smith, and 
Julia, bursting into tears as she clasps her child to her bosom, 
says, " My child, my child, will you be taught to be ashamed 
of your mother ! " 

Edward Hings out of the room in a rage. It is true that 
Mrs. Smith is not (it to associate with his family, and that her 
manners are not like theirs ; that Julia's eldest brother, who is 
a serious tanner at Cardifl', is not a pleasant companion after 
dinner: and that it is not agreeable to be called '"Ned" and 
''Old Cove" by her younger brother, who is an attorney's 
clerk in Gray's Inn, and favors Ned by asking him to lend him 
a " Sov.," and by coming to dinner on Sundays. It is time 
that the appearance of that youth at the hrst little party the 
Edward Joneses gave after their marriage, when Natty dis- 
gracefully inebriated himself, caused no little scandal amongst 
his friends, and much wrath on the part of old Jones, who said, 
" That little scaini) call my daughters by their Christian names ! 
— a little beggar that is not fit to sit down in my hall. ]f ever 
he dares to call at my house I'll tell Jobbins to tling a pail of 
Avater over him." And it is true that Natty called many times 
in Pocklington Squai'e, and complained to Edward that he, 
Nat, could neither see his Mar nor the Gurls, and that the old 
gent cut up uncommon stilf. 

So you see Edward Jones has had his way, and got a hand- 
some wife, but at what expense? He and his family are sepa- 
rated. His vvife brought him nothing but good looks. Her 
stock of brains is small. She is not easy in the new society 
into which she has been brought, and sits quite mum both at 
the grand jiarties which the old Joneses give in Pocklington 
Square, and at the snug little entertainments which poor Ed- 
ward Jones tries on his own part. The women of the Jones's 
set tr}- her in every way, and can get no good fi'om her : Jones's 
male friends, who are civilized beings, talk to her, and receive 
only monosyllables in reply. His house is a stupid one; his 
acquaintances drop otl"; he lias uo circle at all at last, except, 



366 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

to be sure, that increasing famil}^ circle which brings up old 
Mrs. Smith from Swansea every year. 

What is the lot of a man at the end of a dozen 3'ears who 
has a wife like this ? She is handsome no longer, and she never 
had any other merit. He can't read novels to her all through 
his life, while she is working slippers — it is absurd. He can't 
be philandering in Kensington Gardens with a lady who does 
not walk out now except with two nursemaids and the twins in 
a go-cart. He is a 3'oung man still, when she is an old woman. 
Love is a might}' fine thing, dear Bob, but it is not the life of a 
man. There are a thousand other things for him to think of 
besides the red Ups of Lucy, or the bright eyes of Eliza. There 
is business, there is friendship, there is societ}^, there are taxes, 
there is ambition, and the manlv desire to exercise the talents 
which are given us by heaven, and reap the prize of our desert. 
There are other books in a man's librar}' besides Ovid ; and 
after dawdling ever so long at a woman's knee, one day he gets 
up and is free. We have all been there : we have all had the 
fever: the strongest and the smallest, from Samson, Hercules, 
Rinaldo, downwards ; but it burns out, and you get well. 

Ladies who read this, and who know what a love I have for 
the whole sex, will not, I hope, cr}' out at the above observa- 
tions, or be angr}' because I state that the ardor of love declines 
after a certain period. M3' dear Mrs. Hopkins, 3'ou would not 
have Hopkins to carr}' on the same absurd behavior which he 
exhibited when he was courting 3'ou? or in place of going to 
bed and to sleep comfortabh', sitting up half the night to write to 
3^ou bad verses ? You would not have him racked with jealous^' 
if 3'ou danced or spoke with any one else <at a ball ; or neglect 
all his friends, his business, his interest in life, in order to 
dangle at your feet? No, 3'ou are a sensible woman ; 3'ou know 
that he must go to his counting-house, that he must receive and 
visit his friends, and that he must attend to his and vour inter- 
est in life. You are no longer his goddess, his fair}-, his peer- 
less paragon, whose name he shouted as Do7i Quixote did that 
of Dulcinea. You are Jane Hopkins, 3'ou are thirt3' 3'ears old, 
3'Ou have got a parcel of children, and Hop loves 3^ou and them 
with all his heart. He would be a helpless driveller and ninn3^ 
were he to be hone3'mooning still, whereas he is a good honest 
fellow, respected on 'Change, liked by his friends, and famous 
for his port- wine. 

Yes, Bob, the fever goes, but the wife doesn't. Long after 
your passion is over, Mrs. Brown will be at your side, good 
soul, still ; and it is for that, as I trust, long subsequent period 



IN LONDON. 367 

of my worthy Bob's life, that I am anxious. How will she look 
when the fairy brilliancy of the honeymoon has faded into the 
light of common da}" ? 

You are of a jovial and social turn, and like to see the world, 
as wh}' should j^ou not ? It contains a great number of kind and 
honest folks, from whom j^ou ma}^ hear a thousand things wise 
and pleasant. A man ought to like his neighbors, to mix with 
his neighbors, to be popular with his neighbors. It is a friendly 
heart that has plenty of friends. You can't be talking to Mrs. 
Brown for ever and ever : you will be a couple of old geese if 
you do. 

She ought then to be able to make your house pleasant to 
3'our friends. She ought to attract them to it b}^ her grace, her 
good breeding, her good humor. Let it be said of her, " What 
an uncommonly nice woman Mrs. Brown is ! " Let her be, if 
not a clever woman, an ap predator of cleverness in others, 
which, perhaps, clever folks like better. Above all, let her have 
a sense of humor, m}" dear Bob, for a woman without a laugh 
in her (like the late excellent Mrs. Brown) is the greatest bore 
in existence. Life without laughing is a dreary blank. A 
woman who cannot laugh is a wet blanket on the kindl}" nuptial 
couch. A good laugh is sunshine in a house. A quick intelli- 
gence, a brightening eye, a kind smile, a cheerful spirit, — 
these, I hope, Mrs. Bob will bring to you in her trousseau^ to be 
used afterwards for daily wear. Before all things, my dear 
Nephew, try and have a cheerful wife. 

What, indeed, does not that word '' cheerfulness " impl}^? 
It means a contented spirit, it means a pure heart, it means a 
kind and loving disposition ; it means humility and charity ; it 
means a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion 
of self. Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, 
are always pompous and self-conceited ; that is, bigoted ; that 
is, cruel ; that is, ungentle, uncharitable, unchristian. Have a 
good, jolly, laughing, kind woman, then, for your partner, you 
who are 3'ourself a kind and joll}^ fellow ; and when yow. go to 
sleep, and when 3^ou wake, I pra^' there may be a smile under 
each of your honest nightcaps. 



368 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 



OUT OF TOWN. 

I. 

I HAVE little news, my dear Bob, wherewith to entertain thee 
from this city, from which almost everj^body has fled within the 
last week, and which lies in a state of torpor. I wonder what 
the newspapers find to talk about day after da}', and how they 
come out every morning. But for a little distant noise of 
cannonading from the Danube and the Theiss, the whole world 
is silent, and London seems to have hauled down her flag, as 
her Majesty has done at Pimhco, and the queen of cities has 
gone out of town. 

You, in pursuit of Miss Kickleburj^ are probably by this 
time at Spa or Homburg. Watch her well. Bob, and see what 
her tempor is like. See whether she flirts with the foreigners 
much, examine how she looks of a morning (you will have a 
hundred opportunities of familiarity, and can drop in and out of 
a friend's apartments at a German watering-place as you never 
can hope to do here), examine her conduct with her little sisters, 
if the}'- are of the part}^, whether she is good and plaj^ful with 
them, see whether she is cheerful and obedient to old Lady 
Kick (I acknowledge a hard task) — in fine, try her manners 
and temper, and see whether she wears them all day, and only 
puts on her smiles with her fresh bonnet, to come out on the 
parade at music time. I, meanwhile, remain behind, alone in 
our airy and great Babylon. 

As an old soldier when he gets to his ground begins straight- 
way a se caser^ as the French say, makes the most of his circum- 
stances, and himself as comfortable as he can, an old London 
man, if obliged to pass the dull season in town, accommodates 
himself to the time, and forages here and there in the deserted 
city, and manages to make his own tent snug. A thousand 
means of comfort and amusement spring up, whereof a man has 
no idea of the existence, in the midst of the din and racket of 
the London season. I, for my part, am grown to that age, sir, 
when I hke the quiet time the best : the gayety of the great 
London season is too strong and noisy for me ; I like to talk to 
my beloved metropolis when she has done dancing at crowded 
balls, and squeezing at concerts, and chattering at conversa- 
ziones, and gorging at great dinners — when she is calm, con- 
templative, confidential, and at leisure. 



IN LONDON. 369 

Colonel Paclmore of our Club being out of town, and too wise 
a man to send his favorite old cob to grass, I mounted him 3^es- 
terda}', and took a ride in Rotten Row, and in various parts of 
the cit}', where but ten da3's back all sorts of life, hilaritj', and 
hospitalit}^, were going on. What a change it is now in the 
Park, from that scene which the modern Pep3's, and that in- 
genious 3'outh who signs his immortal drawings with a D sur- 
mounted b^' a dickey-bird, depicted onlj^ a few weeks ago ! 
Where are the thousands of carriages that crawled along the 
Serpentine shore, and which give an observant man a happ^^ and 
wholesome sense of his own insignificance — for 3'ou shall be a 
man long upon the town, and pass five hundred equipages with- 
out knowing the owners of one of them ? Where are the m3'ri- 
ads of horsemen who trampled the Row ? — the splendid dandies 
whose boots were shin3^, wiiose chins were tufted, whose shirts 
were astounding, whose manners were frank and manty, whose 
brains were somewhat small ? Where are the stout old capital- 
ists and bishops on their cobs (the Bench, by the wa3', cuts an 
uncommonl3' good figure on horseback) ? Where are the dear 
rideresses, above all? Where is slie the gleaming of whose red 
neck-ribbon in the distance made 3'our venerable uncle's heart 
beat. Bob ? He sees her now prancing b3^, severe and beautiful 
— a 3'oung Diana, with pure bright e3^es ! Where is Fann3^, 
who wore the prett3^ gi'^y bat and feather, and rode the prett3' 
gray mare? Fann3^ changed her name last week, without ever 
so much as sending me a piece of cake. The ga3^ squadrons 
have disappeared : the ground no longer thrills with the thump 
of their countless hoofs. Watteau-like groups in shot silks no 
longer compose themselves under the green boughs of Kensing- 
ton Gardens : the scarlet trumpeters have blown themselves 
awa3^ thence ; you don't behold a score of horsemen in the course 
of an hour's ride ; and Mrs. Catherine Highflyer, whom a fort- 
night since 3'ou never saw unaccompanied by some superb 3'oung 
Earl and roue of the fashion, had 3'esterday so little to do with 
her beautiful e3es, that she absolute l3' tried to kill vour humble 
servant with them as she cantered b3'' me in at the barriers of 
the Row, and looked round firing Parthian shots behind her. 
But Padmore's cob did not trot, nor did m3^ blood run, any the 
quicker, Mr. Bob ; man and beast are grown too old and stead3" 
to be put out of our pace b3^ any Mrs. Highflyer of them all ; 
and though I hope, if I liv^e to be a hundred, never to be un- 
moved by the sight of a pretty girl, it is not th3^ kind of beaut3% 
O ogling and vain Delilah, that can set me cantering after 
thee- 

24 



370 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

By the way, one of the benefits I find in the dull season is 
at my own lodgings. When I ring the bell now, that uncom- 
monly pretty young woman, the landlady's daughter, conde- 
scends to come in and superintend ray comfort, and whisk about 
amongst the books and tea-things, and wait upon me in general : 
whereas in the full season, when young Lord Claude Lollypop 
is here attending to his arduous duties in Parliament, and occu- 
pying his accustomed lodgings on the second floor, the deuce a 
bit will Miss Flora ever deign to bring a message or a letter to 
old Mr. Brown on the first, but sends me in Muggins, my old 
servant, whose ugty face I have known anj' time these thirty 
years, or the blowsy maid-of-all-work with her sandy hair in 
papers. 

Again, at the Club, how man}^ privileges does a man linger- 
ing in London enjo}", from which he is precluded in the full 
season ? Every man in every Club has three or four special 
aversions — men who somehow annoy him, as I have no doubt 
but that 3'ou and I, Bob, are hated by some particular man, and 
for that excellent reason for which the poet disliked Dr. Fell — 
the appearance of old Banquo, in the same place, in the same 
arm-chair, reading the newspaper da}^ after day and evening 
after evening ; of Mr. Plodder threading among the coflTce-room 
tables and taking note of every man's dinner; of old General 
Hawkshaw, who makes that constant noise in the Club, sneez- 
ing, coughing, and blowing his nose — all these men, by their 
various defects or qualities, have driven me half mad at times, 
and I have thought to myself. Oh, that I could go to the Club 
without seeing Banquo — Oh, that Plodder would not come and 
inspect my mutton-chop — Oh, that fate would remove Hawk- 
shaw and his pocket-handkerchief for ever out of my sight and 
hearing ! Well, August arrives, and one's three men of the 
sea are off one's shoulders. Mr. and Mrs. Banquo are at Leam- 
ington, the paper says ; Mr. Plodder is gone to Paris to inspect 
the dinners at the "Trois Freres ; " and Hawkshaw is coughing 
away at Brighton, where the sad sea waves murmur before him. 
The^Club is^your own. How pleasant it is ! You can get the 
Globe and Standard now without a struggle ; you may see all 
the Sunday papers ; when you dine it is not like dining in a 
street dinned by the tramp of waiters perpetuall}^ passing with 
clanking dishes of various odors, and jostled by 3'oung men who 
look scowlingly down upon your dinner as the}" pass with 
creaking boots. They are all gone — 3^ou sit in a vast and 
agreeable apartment with twenty large servants at your orders 
— if you were a Duke with a thousand pounds a day you couldn'tr 



IN LONDON. 371 

be better served or lodged. Those men, having nothing else to 
do, are anxious to prevent 3'our desires and make 3'ou happy — 
the butler bustles about with your pint of wine — if 3^ou order 
a dish, the chef himself will probably cook it ; what mortal can 
ask more. 

I once read in a book purporting to give descriptions of 
London, and life and manners, an account of a family in the 
lower ranks of genteel life, who shut up the front windows of 
tlieir house, and lived in the back rooms, from which they only 
issued for fresh air surreptitiously at midnight, so that their 
friends might suppose that they were out of town. I suppose 
that there is some foundation for this legend. I suppose that 
some people are actually afraid to be seen in London, when the 
persons who form their societ}' have quitted the metropolis : and 
that Mr. and Mrs. Higgs being left at home at Islington, when 
Mr. and Mrs. Biggs, their next-door neighbors, have departed 
for Margate or Gravesend, feel pangs of shame at their own 
povert}', and env}^ at their friends' better fortune. I have seen 
many men and cities, my dear Bob, and noted their manners: 
and for servility I will back a free-born Englishman of the 
respectable classes against any man of any nation in the world. 
In the competition for social rank between Higgs and Biggs, 
think w^hat a strange standard of superiority is set up ! — a 
shilling steamer to Gravesend, and a few shrim^js more or less 
on one part or the other, settle the claim. Perhaps in what is 
called high life, there are disputes as paltrj^ aims as mean, and 
distinctions as absurd ; but mj' business is with this present 
folly of being ashamed to be in London. Ashamed, sir ! I like 
being in London at this time, and have so much to say regard- 
ing the pleasures of the place in the dead season, that I hope to 
write you another letter regarding it next week. 



n. 

Careering during the season from one part}'' to another, from 
one great dinner of twent}^ covers to another of eighteen guests ; 
from Ladj^ Hustlebury's rout to Mrs. Packington's soiree — 
friendship, to a man about town, becomes impossible from 
February to August : it is only his acquaintances he can culti- 
vate during those six months of turmoil. 

In the last fortnight, one has had leisure to recur to more 
tender emotions : in other w^ords, as nobod}^ has asked me to 
dinner, I have been about seeking dinners from my old friends. 
And very glad are thev to see you : very kindly and hospitable 



372 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

are the}' disposed to be, very pleasant are those little calm 
reunions in the quiet summer evenings, when the beloved friend 
of your 3'outh and you sip a bottle of claret together leisurely 
without candles, and ascend to the drawing-room where the 
friend of your youth's wife sits blandly presiding over the tea- 
pot. What matters that it is the metal teapot, the silver utensils 
being packed off to the banker's ? What matters that the hang-^ 
ings are down, and the lustre in a brown-hollands bag? Inti- 
mac}' increases hy this artless confidence — you are admitted to 
a family en deshabille. In an honest man's house, the wine is 
never sent to the banker's ; he can always go to the cellar for 
that. And so we drink and prattle in quiet — about the past 
season, about our sons at college, and what not? We become 
intimate again, because Fate, which has long separated us, 
throws us once more together. I sa\' the dull season is a kind 
season : gentle and amiable, friendlj' and full of quiet enjo}'- 
ment. 

Among these pleasant little meetings, for which the present 
season has given time and opportunity, I shall mention one, sir, 
which took place last Wednesday, and which during the very 
dinner itself I vowed I would describe, if the venerable Mr. 
Punch would grant me leave and space, in the columns of a 
journal which has for its object the promotion of mirth and 
good-will. 

In the 3'ear eighteen hundred and something, sir, there lived 
at a villa, at a short distance from London, a certain gentleman 
and lad}' who had many acquaintances and friends, among whom 
was your humble servant. For to become acquainted with 
this young woman was to be her friend, so friendly was she, so 
kind, so gentle, so full of natural genius, and graceful feminine 
accomplishment. Whatever she did, she did charmingly ; her 
life was decorated with a hundred pretty gifts, with which, as 
one would fancy, kind fairies had endowed her cradle ; music 
and pictures seemed to flow naturally out of her hand, as she 
laid it on the piano or the drawing-board. She sang exqui- 
sitely, and with a full heart, and as if she couldn't help it any 
more than a bird. I have an image of this fair creature before 
me now, a calm, sunshiny evening, a green lawn flaring with 
roses and geraniums, and a half-dozen gentlemen sauntering 
thereon in a state of great contentment, or gathered under the 
veranda, by the open French window : near by she sits sing- 
ing at the piano. She is in a pink dress : she has gigot sleeves ; 
a little child in a prodigious sash is playing about at her mother's 
knee. She sings song after song : the sun goes down behind 



IN LONDON. 373 

the blacl«,4ir-trees that belt the lawn, and Missy in the blue sash 
vanishes to the nursery ; the room darkens in the twilight ; the 
stars appear in the heaven — and the tips of the cigars glow in 
the balcony ; she sings song after song, in accents soft and low, 
tender and melodious — we are never tired of hearino- her. 
Indeed, Bob, I can hear her still — the stars of those calm 
nights still shine in my memory, and I have been humming one 
of her tunes with my pen in m}' mouth, to the surprise of Mr. 
Dodder, who is writing at the opposite side of the table, and 
wondering at the lackadaisical expression which pervades my 
venerable mug. 

You will naturally argue from the above pathetic passage, 
that I was greatly smitten by Mrs. Nightingale (as we will call 
this lady, if you will permit me). You are right, sir. For 
what is an amiable woman made, but that we should fall in love 
with her? I do not mean to say that you are to lose your 
sleep, or give up your dinner, or make yourself unhappy in her 
absence ; but when the sun shines (and it is not too hot) I hke 
to bask in it ; when the bird sings, to listen : and to admire 
that which is admirable with an honest and hearty enjoyment. 
There were a half-dozen men at the period of which I speak 
who wore Mrs. Nightingale's colors, and we used to be invited 
down from London of a Saturda}^ and Sunday, to Thorn wood, 
by the hospitable host and hostess there, and it seemed like 
going back to school, when we came away by the coach of a 
Monday morning : we talked of her all the wa}' back to London, 
to separate upon our various callings when we got into the 
smoky city. Salvator Rodgers, the painter, went to his easel ; 
Woodward, the barrister, to his chambers ; Piper, the doctor, 
to his patient (for he then had onl}^ one), and so forth. Fate 
called us each to his business, and has sent us upon many a 
distant errand since that da3\ But from that da^^ to this, when- 
ever we meet, the remembrance of the holidays at Thornwood 
has been alwaj^s a bond of union between us : and we have 
alwaj's had Mrs. Nightingale's colors put away amongst the 
cherished relics of old times. 

N. was a West India merchant, and his propert}' went to 
the bad. He died at Jamaica. Thornwood was let to other 
people, who knew us not. The widow with a small jointure 
retired, and educated her daughter abroad. We had not heard 
of her for 3'ears and years, nor until she came to town about a 
legacy a few weeks since. 

In those 3'ears and 3'ears what changes have taken place ! 
Sir Salvator Rodgers is a Member of the Ro3'al Academy' ; 



374 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

Woodward, the barrister, has made a fortune at theMBar ; and 
in seeing Dr. Piper in his barouche, as he rolls about Bel- 
gravia and Ma}^ Fair, you at once know what a man of impor- 
tance he has become. 

On last Monda}^ week, sir, I received a letter in a delicate 
female handwriting, with which I was not acquainted, and 
which Miss Flora, the landladj^'s daughter, condescended to 
bring me, sajing that it had been left at the door by two 
ladies in a brougham. 



li 



Why did you not let them come up stairs ? " said I in a 
rage, after reading the note. 

" We don't know what sort of people goes about in 
broughams," said Miss Flora, with a toss of her head; "we 
don't want no ladies in our house." And she flung her imperti- 
nence out of the room. 

The note was signed Frances Nightingale, — whereas our 
Nightingale's name was Louisa. But this Frances was no 
other than the little thing in the large blue sash, whom we 
remembered at Thornwood ever so many years ago. The 
writer declared that she recollected me quite well, that her 
mamma was most anxious to see an old friend, and that they 
had apartments at No. 166 Clarges Street, Piccadilly, whither 
I hastened off to pay my respects to Mrs. Nightingale. 

When I entered the room, a tall and beautiful young woman 
with blue eyes, and a serene and majestic air, came up to 
shake hands with me : and I beheld in her, without in the least 
recognizing, the little Fanny of the blue sash. Mamma came 
out of the adjoining apartment presentl}^ We had not met 
since — since all sorts of events had occurred — her voice was 
not a little agitated. Here was that fair creature whom we had 
admired so. Sir, I shall not sav whether she was altered or 
not. The tones of her voice were as sweet and kind as ever ; — 
and we talked about Miss Fann}' as a subject in common be- 
tween us, and I admired the growth and beauty of the 3"oung 
lady, though I did not mind telling her to her face (at which to 
be sure the girl was delighted), that she never in my e3'es would 
be half so pretty as her mother. 

Well, sir, upon this day arrangements were made for the 
dinner which took place on Wednesday last, and to the remem- 
brance of which I determined to consecrate this present page. 

It so happened that everybody was in town of the old set of 
whom I have made mention, and everj^bodj^ was disengaged. 
Sir Salvator Rodgers (who has become such a swell since he 
was knighted and got the cordon of the order of the George and 



IN LONDON. 375 

Blue Boar of Russia, that we like to laugh at him a little,) 
made his appearance at eight o'clock, and was perfectly natural 
and affable. Woodward, the lawj^er, forgot his abominable law 
and his mone}' about which he is always thinking : and finall}', 
Dr. Piper, of whom we despaired because his wife is mortally 
jealous of every lad}^ whom he attends, and will hardly let him 
dine out of her sight, had pleaded Lady Rackstraw's situation 
as a reason for not going down to Wimbledon Common till 
night — and so we six had a meeting. 

The door was opened to us by a maid, who looked us hard 
in the face as we went up stairs, and who was no other than 
little Fanny's nurse in former daj's, come like us to visit her old 
mistress. We all knew her except Woodward, the law3'er, and 
all shook hands with her except him. Constant study had 
driven her out of the law3'er's memory. I don't think he ever 
cared for Mrs. Nightingale as much as the rest of us did, or 
indeed that it is in the nature of that learned man to care for 
an}' but one learned person. 

And what do 3'ou think, sir, this dear and faithful widow 
had done to make us welcome ? She remembered the dishes 
that we used to like ever so long ago, and she had ever}' man's 
favorite dish for him. Rodgers used to have a passion for 
herrings — there the}' were ; the lawyer, who has an enormous 
appetite, which he gratifies at other people's expense, had a 
shoulder of mutton and onion sauce, which the lean and hun- 
gry man devoured almost entirely : mine did not come till the 
second course — it was baked plum-pudding — I was affected 
when I saw it, sir — I choked almost when I ate it. Piper 
made a beautiful little speech, and made an ice compound, for 
which he was famous, and we drank it just as we used to drink 
it in old times, and to the health of the widow. 

How should we have had this dinner, how could we all have 
assembled together again, if everybody had not been out of 
town, and everybody had not been disengaged? Just for one 
evening, the scattered members of an old circle of friendship 
returned and met round the old table again — round this little 
green island we moor for the night at least, — to-morrow we 
part company, and each man for himself sails over the ingens 
cequor. 

Since I wrote the above, I find that everybody really is gone 
away. The widow left town on Friday. I have been on my 
round just now, and have been met at every step by closed 
shutters and the faces of unfamiliar charwomen. No. 9 is gone 
to Malvern. No. 37, 15, 25, 48, and 36a, are gone to Scot- 



376 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

land. The solitude of the Club begins to be unbearable, and I 
found Muggins this morning preparing a mysterious apparatus 
of travelling boot-trees, and dusting the portmanteaus. 

If you are not getting on well with the Kickleburys at Hom- 
burg I recommend you to go to Spa. Mrs. Nightingale is 
going thither, and will be at the Hotel d'Orange ; where 3'ou 
may use m}' name and present yourself to her ; and I may hint 
to you in confidence that Miss Fanny will have a ver}^ pretty 
little fortune. 



ON A LADY IN AN OPERA-BOX. 

Going the other night to the Conservatoire at Paris, where 
there was a magnificent assemblage of rank and fashion gathered 
together to hear the delightful performance of Madame Sontag, 
the friend who conferred upon me the polite favor of a ticket to 
the stalls, also pointed out to me who were the most remarkable 
personages round about us. There were ambassadors, politi- 
cians, and gentlemen, military and literary ; there were beauties, 
French, Russian, and EngUsh : there were old ladies who had 
been beauties once, and who, by the help of a little distance 
and politeness (and if you didn't use 3'our opera-glass, which is 
a cruel detector of paint and wrinkles) , looked 3'oung and hand- 
some still : and plentj' of old bucks in the stalls and boxes, 
well wigged, well gloved, and brilliantly waistcoated, very ob- 
sequious to the ladies, and satisfied with themselves and the 
world. 

Up in the second tier of boxes I saw a very stout, joll}^ 
good-humored-looking lad}^ whose head-dress and ringlets and 
general appurtenances were unmistakably English — and whom, 
were 3'ou to meet her at Timbuctoo, or in the Seraglio of the 
Grand Sultan amongst a bev3^ of beauties collected from all the 
countries of the earth, one would instantly know to be a British 
female. I do not mean to sa3^ that, were I the Padishah, I 
would select that moon-faced houri out of all the loveh' societ3', 
and make her the Empress or Grand Signora of my dominions ; 
but simpl3^ that there is a character about our countr3'women 
which leads one to know, recognize, and admire, and wonder at 
them among all women of all tongues and countries. We have 
our British Lion ; we have our Britannia ruling the waves : we 
have our British female — the most respectable, the most re- 



IN LONDON. 377 

markable, of the women of this world. And now we have 
come to the woman who gives the subject, though she is not 
herself the subject, of these present remarks. 

As I looked at her with that fond curiosity and silent pleas- 
ure and wonder which she (I mean the Great-British Female) 
always inspires in my mind, watching her smiles, her ways and 
motions, her allurements and attractive gestures — her head 
bobbing to this friend whom she recognized in the stalls — her 
jolly fat hand wagging a welcome to that acquaintance in a 
neighboring box — my friend and guide for the evening caught 
her eye, and made her a respectful bow, and said to me with a 
look of much meaning, " That is Mrs. Trotter- Walker." And 
from that minute I forgot Madame Sontag, and thought only of 
Mrs. T.-W. 

"So that," said I, "is Mrs. Trotter- Walker ! You have 
touched a chord in my heart. You have brought back old times 
to my memory, and made me recall some of the griefs and dis- 
appointments of my earl^^ days." 

" Hold your tongue, man ! " says Tom, my friend. " Listen 
to the Sontag ; how divinely she is singing ! how fresh her 
voice is still ! " 

I looked up at Mrs. Walker all the time with unabated 
interest. " Madam," thought I, " you look to be as kind and 
good-natured a person as eyes ever lighted upon. The way in 
which 3^ou are smiling to that young dandy with the double 
ej^eglass, and the empressement with which he returns the salute, 
show that your friends are persons of rank and elegance, and 
that you are esteemed by them — giving them, as I am sure 
from 3^our kind appearance you do, good dinners and pleasant 
balls. But I wonder what would you think if you knew that I 
was looking at you ? I behold you for the first time : there are 
a hundred pretty 3^oung girls in the house, whom an amateur of 
mere beauty would examine with much greater satisfaction than 
he would naturally bestow upon a lady whose prime is past ; 
and yet the sight of you interests me and tickles me, so to 
speak, and my eyeglass can't remove itself from the contem- 
plation of 3"our honest face." 

What is it that interests me so? What do you suppose 
interests a man the most in this life? Himself, to be sure. 
It is at himself he is looking through his opera-glass — him- 
self who is concerned, or he would not be watching 3'ou so 
keenly. And now let me confess why it is that the lady in 
the upper box excites me so, and why I say, "That is Mrs. 
Trotter- Walker, is it ? " with an au: of such deep interest. 



378 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

Well then. In the year eighteen hundred and thirty odd, 
it happened that I went to pass the winter at Rome, as we will 
call the city. Major-General .and Mrs. Trotter- Walker were 
also there ; and until I heard of them there, I had never heard 
that there were such people in existence as the General and 
the lady — the lady yonder with the large fan in the upper 
boxes. Mrs. Walker, as became her station in life, took, I 
dare sa}^ ver}^ comfortable lodgings, gave dinners and parties 
to her friends, and had a night in the week for receptions. 

Much as I have travelled and lived abroad, these evening 
reunions have never greatly fascinated me. Man cannot live 
upon lemonade, wax candles, and weak tea. Gloves and white 
neck-cloths cost mone}^, and those plagu}' shiny boots are alwa3'S 
so tight and hot. Am I made of money, that I can hire a 
coach to go to one of these soii-ees on a rainy Roman night ; or 
can I come in goloshes, and take them off in the ante-chamber? 
I am too poor for cabs, and too vain for goloshes. If it had 
been to see the girl of my heart, (I mean at the time when there 
were girls, and I had a heart,) I couldn't have gone in goloshes. 
Well, not being in love, and not liking weak tea and lemonade, 
I did not go to evening parties that 3^ear at Rome : nor, of later 
years, at Paris, Vienna, Copenhagen, Islington, or wherever I 
maj" have been. 

What, then, were my feelings when my dear and valued 
friend, Mrs. Coverlade, (she is a daughter of that venerable 
Peer, the Right Honorable the Lord Commandine,) who was 
passing the winter too at Rome, said to me, ''My dear Dr. 
Pacifico, what have you done to offend Mrs. Trotter- Walker ? " 

" I know no person of that name," I said. "I knew Walker 
of the Post Office, and poor Trotter who was a captain in our 
regiment, and died under my hands at the Bahamas. But 
with the Trotter- Walkers I haven't the honor of an acquaint- 
ance." 

" Well, it is not likely that you will have that honor," Mrs. 
Coverlade said. "Mrs. Walker said last night that she did 
not wish to make 3'our acquaintance, and that she did not in- 
tend to receive you." 

" I think she might have waited until I asked her, Madam," 
I said. "What have I done to her? I have never seen or 
heard of her : how should I want to get into her house ? or 
attend at her Tuesdays — confound her Tuesda3's ! " I am 
sorry to say I said, " Confound Mrs. Wallver's Tuesdays," and 
the conversation took another turn, and it so happened that I 
was called away from Rome suddenl3^, and never set eyes upon 



IN LONDON. 379 

Mrs. Walker, or indeed thought about her from that da}^ to 
this. 

Strange endurance of human vanity! a million of much 
more important conversations have escaped one since then, 
most likel}^ — but the memory of this httle mortification (for 
such it is, after all) remains quite fresh in the mind, and un- 
forgotten, though it is a trifle, and more than half a score of 
3'ears old. We forgive injuries, we survive even our remorse 
for great wrongs that w^e ourselves commit ; but I doubt if we 
ever forgive slights of this nature put upon us, or forget circum- 
stances in which our self-love had been made to suffer. 

Otherwise, why should the remembrance of Mrs. Trotter- 
Walker have remained so lively in this bosom ? Why should 
her appearance have excited such a keen interest in these e3'es ? 
Had Venus or Helen (the favorite beauty of Paris) been at the 
side of Mrs. T^-W., I should have looked at the latter more 
than at the Queen of Love herself. Had Mrs. Walker mur- 
dered Mrs. Pacifico, or inflicted some mortal injury upon me, 
I might forgive her — but for slight? Never, Mrs. Trotter- 
Walker ; never, by Nemesis, never ! 

And now, having allowed my personal wrath to explode, 
let us calmly moralize for a minute or two upon this little cir- 
cumstance ; for there is no circumstance, however little, that 
won't afford a text for a sermon. Why was it that Mrs. Gen- 
eral Trotter-Walker refused to receive Dr. S. Pacifico at her 
parties? She liad noticed me probably somewhere where I had 
not remarked her ; she did not like my aquiline countenance, 
my manner of taking snuff, my Blucher boots, or what not? or 
she had seen me walking with my friend Jack Raggett, the 
painter, on the Pincio — a fellow with a hat and beard like a 
bandit, a shabby paletot, and a great pipe between his teeth. 
I was not genteel enough for her circle — I assume that to be 
the reason ; indeed, Mrs. Coverlade, with a good-natured smile 
at my coat, which I own was somewhat shabby, gave me to 
understand as much. 

You little know, m}^ worth}^ kind lady, what a loss 3'ou had 
that season at Rome, in turning up your amiable nose at the 
present writer. I could have given you appropriate anecdotes 
(with which ni}^ mind is stored) of all the courts of Europe 
(besides of Africa, Asia, and St. Domingo,) which I have 
visited. I could have made the General die of laughing after 
dinner with some of m^^ funn}' stories, of which I keep a 
book, without which I never travel. 1 am content with my 
dinner : I can carve beautifully, and make jokes upon almost 



380 SKETCHES Al^B TRAVELS 

any dish at table. I can talk about wine, cookery, hotels all 
over the Continent : — anything you will. I have been familiar 
with Cardinals, Red Republicans, Jesuits, German Princes, 
and Carbonari ; and what is more, I can listen and hold my 
tongue to admiration. Ah, Madam ! what did 3'ou lose in re- 
fusing to make the acquaintance of Solomon Pacifico, M. D. ! 

And why ? Because my coat was a trifle threadbare ; be- 
cause I dined at the " Lepre " with Raggett and some of those 
other bandits of painters, and had not the money to hire a 
coach and horses. 

Gentility is the death and destruction of social happiness 
amongst the middle classes in England. It destroys natural- 
ness (if I may coin such a word) and kindl}^ sympathies. The 
object of life, as I take it, is to be friendl}' with everybod}-. 
As a rule, and to a philosophical cosmopolite, every man ought 
to be welcome. I do not mean to 3'our intimacy or affection, 
but to your societ}' ; as there is, if we would or could but dis- 
cover it, something notable, something worth}'^ of observation, 
of sympathy, of wonder and amusement in ever}^ fellow-mortal. 
If I had been Mr. Pacifico, travelling with a courier and a 
carriage, would Mrs. Walker have made any objection to me? 
I think not. It was the Blucher boots and the worn hat and 
the homel}' companion of the individual which were unwelcome 
to this lad}'. If I had been the disguised Duke Pacifico, and 
not a retired army-surgeon, would she have forgiven herself 
for slighting me? What stores of novels, what foison of plays, 
are composed upon this theme, — the queer old character in 
the wig and cloak throws off coat and spectacles, and appears 
suddenly' with a star and crown, — a Haroun Alraschid, or 
other Merry^ Monarch. And straightwa}'' we clap our hands 
and applaud — what ? — the star and garter. 

But disguised emperors are not common now-a-da3'S. You 
don't turn away monarchs from }'our door, any more than 
angels, unawares. Consider, though, how many a good fellow 
3"ou may shut out and sneer upon ! what an immense deal of 
pleasure, frankness, kindness, good-fellowship, we forego for 
the sake of our confounded gentility, and respect for outward 
show ! Instead of placing our society upon an honest footing, 
we make our aim almost avowedl}^ sordid. Love is of necessity' 
banished from your societ}' when you measure all 3'our guests 
by a mone3'-standard. 

I think of all this — a harmless man — seeing a good-natured- 
looking, jolly woman in the boxes yonder, who thought her- 
self once too great a person to associate with the hkes of me. 



IN LONDON. 381 

If I give myself airs to m}^ neighbor, may I think of this too, 
and be a little more humble ! And you, honest friend, who 
read this — have you ever pooh-poohed a man as good as you ? 
If 3'ou fall into the society of people whom you are pleased to 
call your inferiors, did you ever sneer? If so, change I into 
U, and the fable is narrated for your own benefit, by your 
obedient servant, 

Solomon Pacifico. 



ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING A FOGY. 

Whilst I was riding the other da}^ by the beautiful Serpen- 
tine River upon my excellent friend Heavy side's gray cob, and 
in company of the gallant and agreeable Augustus Topladj', a 
carriage passed from which looked out a face of such remarkable 
beaut V, that Augustus and m3'self quickened our pace to follow 
the vehicle, and to keep for a while those charming features in 
view. M}^ beloved and unknown 3'oung friend who peruse these 
lines, it was ver}' likely your face whicli attracted your humble 
servant ; recollect whether you were not in the Park upon the day 
I allude to, and if vou were, whom else could I mean but vou? 
I don't know jour name ; I have forgotten the arms on the car- 
riage, or whether there were an}' ; and as for women's dresses, 
who can remember them? but 3^our dear kind countenance 
was so prett}^ and good-humored and pleasant to look at, that 
it remains to this day faithfully engraven on my heart, and I 
feel sure that 3'ou are as good as you are handsome. Almost 
all handsome women are good : they cannot choose but be 
good and gentle with those sweet features and that charming 
graceful figure. A daj^ in which one sees a very pretty woman 
should alwaj'S be noted as a hoh'day with a man, and marked 
with a white stone. In this way, and at this season in London, 
to be sure, such a da}^ comes seven times in the week, and 
our calendar, like that of the Roman Catholics, is all Saints' 
days. 

Toplad}', then, on his chestnut horse, with his glass in his 
e3'e, and the tips of his shin}' boots just touching the stirrup, 
and your slave, the present writer, rode after 3'our carriage, 
and looked at 3^ou with such notes of admiration expressed in 
their e3'es, that you remember 3'ou blushed, 3^ou smiled, and 
then began to talk to that ver3' nice-looking elderl}- lad\' in the 



382 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

front seat, who of course was your Mamma. You turned out 
of the ride — it was time to go home and dress for dinner, — 
you were gone. Good luck go with 3^ou, and with all fair 
things which thus come and pass away ! 

Top caused his horse to cut all sorts of absurd capers and 
caracoles by the side of your carriage. He made it dance 
upon two legs, then upon other two, then as if he would jump 
over the raihngs and crush the admiring nursery-maids and the 
rest of the infantr}^ I should think he got his animal from 
Batty 's, and that, at a crack of Widdicomb's whip, he could 
dance a quadrille. He ogled, he smiled, he took off his hat 
to a Countess's carriage that happened to be passing in the 
other line, and so showed his hair; he grinned, he kissed his 
little finger-tips and flung them about as if he would shake 
them off — whereas the other party on the gray cob — the old 
gentleman — powdered along at a resolute trot, and never once 
took his respectful e^'es off 3'ou while you continued in the 
ring. 

When you were gone (3'ou see by the way in which I lin- 
ger about you still, that I am unwilling to part with j'ou) 
Td|)lady turned round upon me with a killing triumphant air, 
and stroked that impudent little tuft he has on his chin, and 
said — " I say, old bo}^, it was the chestnut she was looking 
at, and not the yway'' And I make no doubt he thinks 3'ou 
are in love with him to this minute. 

"You silly 3'oung jackanapes," said I, "what do I care 
whether she was looking at the gra}^ or the chestnut? I was 
thinking about the girl ; 3^ou were thinking about yourself, 
and be hanged to 3'our vanity ! " And with this thrust in 
his little chest, I flatter myself I upset young Toplad}', that 
triumphant careering rider. 

It was natural that he should wish to please ; that is, that 
he should wish other people to admire him. Augustus Toplady 
is 3'Oung (still) and lovel3^ It is not until a late period of life 
that a genteel 3'oung fellow, with a Grecian nose and a suita- 
l)le waist and whiskers, begins to admire other people besides 
himself. 

That, however, is the great advantage which a man pos- 
sesses whose morning of life is over, whose reason is not 
taken prisoner by any kind of blandishments, and who knows 
and feels that he is a FOGY. As an old buck is an odious 
sight, absurd, and ridiculous before gods and men ; cruelly, but 
deservedly, quizzed by 3^ou young people, who are not in the 
least duped by his you'thfufairs or toilet artifices, so an hon- 



m LONDON. 383 

est, good-natured, straightforward, middle-aged, easily-pleased 
Fogy is a worthy and amiable member of society, and a man 
who gets both respect and liking. 

Even in the lovely sex, who has not remarked how painful 
is that period of a woman's life when she is passing out of her 
bloom, and thinking about giving up her position as a beauty ? 
What sad injustice and stratagems she has to perpetrate dur- 
ing the struggle ! She hides away her daughters in the school- 
room, she makes them wear cruel pinafores, and dresses herself 
in the garb which they ought to assume. She is obliged to 
distort the calendar, and to resort to all sorts of schemes and 
arts to hide, in her own person, the august and respectable 
marks of time. Ah ! what is this revolt against nature but 
impotent blasphemy? Is not Autumn beautiful in its appointed 
season, that we are to he ashamed of her and paint* her yellow- 
ing leaves pea-green? Let us, I say, take the fall of the year 
as it was made, serenely and sweetly, and await the time when 
Winter comes and the nights shut in. I know, for my part, 
many ladies who are far more agreeable and more beautiful 
too, now that they are no longer beauties ; and, by converse, 
I have no doubt that Toplady, about whom we were speaking 
just now, will be a far pleasanter person when he has given 
up the practice, or desire, of killing the other sex, and has 
sunk into a mellow repose as an old bachelor or a married 
man. 

The great and delightful advantage that a man enjo3"s in 
the world, after he has abdicated all pretensions as a con- 
queror and enslaver of females, and both formally, and of his 
heart, acknowledges himself to be a Fogy, is that he now comes 
for the first time to enjoy and appreciate duly the society of 
women. For a young man about town, there is onl^" one wo- 
man in the whole city — (at least very few indeed of the young 
Turks, let us hope, dare to have two or three strings to their 
wicked bows) — he goes to ball after ball in pursuit of that 
one person ; he sees no other eyes but hers ; hears no other 
voice ; cares for no other petticoat but that in which his charmer 
dances : he pursues her — is refused — is accepted and jilted ; 
breaks his heart, mends it of course, and goes on again after 
some other beloved being, until in the order of fate and na- 
ture he marries and settles, or remains unmarried, free, and a 
Fog}'. Until then we know nothing of women — the kindness 
and refinement and wit of the elders ; the artless prattle and 
dear little chatter of the 3'oung ones ; all these are hidden from 
us until we take the Fogy's degree : nay, even perhaps from 



384 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

married men, whose age and gravity entitle them to rank 
amongst Fogies ; for every woman, who is worth anything, will 
be jealous of her husband up to seventy or eighty, and always 
prevent his intercourse with other ladies. But an old bach- 
elor, or better still, an old widower, has this delightful entree 
into the female world ; he is free to come ; to go ; to Ksten ; 
to joke ; to sympathize ; to talk with mamma about her plans 
and troubles ; to pump from Miss the little secrets that gush 
so easily from her pure little well of a heart ; the ladies do not 
gener themselves before him, and he is admitted to their mys- 
teries like the Doctor, the Confessor, or the Kislar Aga. 

What man, who can enjoy this jjleasure and privilege, ought 
to be indifferent to it? If the societv of one woman is delight- 
ful, as the .young fellows think, and justly, how much more 
delightful is the societ}^ of a thousand ! One woman, for in- 
stance, has brown eyes, and a geological or musical turn ; an- 
other has sweet blue ej^es, and takes, let us sa}', the Gorham 
side of the controversy at present pending ; a third darling, 
with long fringed lashes hiding eyes of hazel, lifts them up 
ceilins-wards in behalf of Miss Sellon, thinks the Lord Chief 
Justice has hit the poor young lad}^ very hard in publishing 
her letters, and proposes to quit the Church next Tuesday or 
Wednesday, or whenever Mr. Oriel is ready — and, of course, 
a man may be in love with one or the other of these. But it 
is manifest that brown eyes will remain brown eyes to the 
end, and that, having no other interest but music or geology, 
her conversation on those points may grow more than suffi- 
cient. Sapphira, again, when she has said her say with regard 
to the Gorham affair, and proved that the other party are but 
Romanists in disguise, and who is interested on no other sub- 
ject, may possibl}^ tire you — so ma}^ Hazelia, who is working 
altar-cloths all day, and would desire no better mart3'rdom 
than to walk barefoot in a night procession up Sloane Street 
and home by Wilton Place, time enough to get her poor meur- 
tris little feet into white slippers for the night's ball — I say, if 
a man can be wrought up to rapture, and enjo}' bliss in the 
company of anj^ one of these 3'oung ladies, or any other indi- 
viduals in the infinite variety of Miss-kind — how much real 
sympathy, benevolent pleasure, and kindly observation may 
he enjoy, when he is allowed to be familiar with the whole 
charming race, and behold the brightness of all their different 
eyes, and listen to the sweet music of their various voices ! 

In possession of the right and privilege of garrulity which is 



IN LOXDON. 385 

accorded to old age, I cannot allow that a single side of paper 
should contain all that I have to say in respect to the manifold 
advantages of being a Fog}'. I am a Fogy, and have been a 
3'oung man. I see twenty women in the world constantly to 
whom I would like to have given a lock of my hair in da3'S 
when m}^ pate boasted of that ornament ; for whom my heart 
felt tumultuous emotions, before the victorious and beloved 
Mrs. Pacilico subjugated it. If I had any feelings now, Mrs. 
P. would order them and me to be quiet : but I have none ; I 
am tranquil — yes, really tranquil (though as my dear Leonora 
is sitting opposite to me at this minute, and has an askance 
glance from her novel to my paper as I write — even if I were 
not tranquil, I should say that I was ; but I am quiet) : I have 
passed the hot stage : and I do not know a pleasanter and 
calmer feeling of mind than that of a respectable person of the 
middle age, who can still be heartil}' and generousl}^ fond of 
all the women about whom he was in a passion and a fever in 
early life. If you cease liking a woman when you cease loving 
her, depend on it, that one of you is a bad one. You are 
parted, never mind with what pangs on either side, or by what 
circumstances of fate, choice, or necessity, — 3'ou have no 
mone}^ or she has too much, or she likes somebodj^ else better, 
and so forth ; but an honest Fogy should always, unless reason 
be given to the contrar}-, think well of the woman whom he 
has once thought well of, and remember her with kindness and 
tenderness, as a man remembers a place where he has been 
very happy. 

A proper management of his recollections thus constitutes a 
very great item in the happiness of a Fogy. I, for my part, 

would rather remember , and , and (I dare not 

mention names, for isn't my Leonora pretending to read " The 
Initials," and peeping over my shoulder?) than be in love over 
again. It is because I have suffered prodigiousl}" from that 
passion that I am interested in beholding others undergoing 
the malady. I watch it in all ball-rooms (over m^^ cards, whei'e 
I and the old ones sit,) and dinner-parties. Without senti- 
ment, there would be no flavor in life at all. I like to watch 
young folks who are fond of each other, be it the housemaid 
furtively engaged smiling and glancing with John through the 
area railings ; be it Miss and the Captain whispering in the 
embrasure of the drawing-room window — Amant is interesting 
to me because of Amavi — of course it is Mrs. Pacifico I mean. 

All Fogies of good breeding and kind condition of mind, 
who go about in the world much, should remember to efface 

25 



38G SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

themselves — if I ma}' use a French phrase — they should not, 
that is to say, thrust in their old mugs on all occasions. When 
the people are marching out to dinner, for instance, and the 
Captain is sidUng up to Miss, Fogy, because he is twenty 
years older than the Captain, should not push himself forward 
to arrest that young fellow, and carry off the disappointed girl 
on his superannuated rheumatic old elbow. When there is 
anything of this sort going on (and a man of the world has 
possession of the carte du pays with half an eye), I become 
interested in a picture, or have something particular to say to 
pretty Polly the parrot, or to little Tommy, who is not coming 
in to dinner, and while I am talking to him, Miss and the Cap- 
tain make their little arrangement. In this way I managed only 
last week to let 3'oung Biliington and the lovely Blanche Poutei 
get together ; and walked down stairs with my hat for the only 
partner of my arm. Augustus Topladj' now, because he was 
a Captain of Dragoons almost before Biliington was born, 
would have insisted upon his right of precedence over Biliing- 
ton, who onlj' got his troop the other da3\ 

Precedence ! Fiddlestick ! Men squabble about precedence 
because they are doubtful about their condition, as Irishmen 
will insist upon it that vou are determined to insult and tram- 
ple upon their beautiful countr}', whether you are thinking 
about it or no ; men 3'oung to the world mistrust the bearing 
of others towards them, because they mistrust themselves. I 
have seen many sneaks and much cringing of course in the 
world ; but the fault of gentlefolks is generally the contrary 
— an absurd doubt of the intentions of others towards us, 
and a perpetual assertion of our twopenny dignit}', which no- 
body is thinking of wounding. 

As a young man, if the Lord I knew did not happen to 
notice me, the next time I met him I used to envelop myself 
in my dignit}', and treat his Lordship with such a tremendous 
hauteur and killing coolness of demeanor, that you might have 
fancied I was an Earl at least, and he a menial upon whom I 
trampled. Whereas he was a simple, good-natured creature 
who had no idea of insulting or slighting me, and, indeed, 
scarcely any idea about any subject, except racing and shoot- 
ing. Young men have this uneasiness in society', because they 
are thinking about themselves : Fogies are happy and tranquil, 
because they are taking advantage of, and enjoying, without 
suspicion, the good-nature and good offices of other well-bred 
people. 

Have you not often wished for yourself, or some other dear 



IN LONDON". 387 

friend, ten thousand a 3'ear? It is natural that 3'ou should like 
such a good thing as ten thousand a year ; and all the pleasures 
and comforts which it brings. So also it is natural that a man 
should like the society' of people well-to-do in the world ; who 
make their houses pleasant, who gather pleasant persons about 
them, who have fine pictures on their walls, pleasant books in 
their libraries, pleasant parks and town and country houses, 
good cooks and good cellars : if I were coming to dine witli 
you, I would rather have a good dinner than a bad one ; if So- 
and-so is as good as you and possesses these things, he, in so 
far, is better than you who do not possess them : therefore I 
had rather go to his house in Belgravia than to 3'our lodgings 
in Kentish Town. That is the rationale of living in good com- 
pau}'. An absurd, conceited, high-and-mighty 3'oung man 
hangs back, at once insolent and bashful ; an honest, simple, 
quiet, easj', clear-sighted Fogy steps in and takes the goods 
which the gods provide, without elation as without squeam- 
ishness. 

It is only a few men who attain simplicity in early life. 
This man has his conceited self-importance to be cured of; 
that has his conceited bashfulness to be " taken out of him," 
as the phrase is. You have a disquiet which 3'ou tr3' to hide, 
and 3'Ou put on a haught3^ guarded manner. You are suspi- 
cious of the good-will of the company round about 3'ou, or of 
the estimation in which they hold 3'Ou. You sit mum at table. 
It is not 3'our place to " put 30urself forward." You are think- 
ing about 3^ourself, that is ; you are suspicious about that per- 
sonage and ever3'body else : that is, 3'ou are not frank ; that is, 
3^ou are not well-bred ; that is, 3'Ou are not agreeable. I would 
instance my 3'oung friend Mumford as a painful example — 
one of the wittiest, cheeriest, cleverest, and most honest of 
fellows in his own circle ; but having the honor to dine the 
other day at Mr. Hobanob's, where his Excellency the Crimean 
Minister and several gentlemen of humor and wit were assem- 
bled, Mumford did not open his mouth once for the purposes 
of conversation, but sat and ate his dinner as silentl3' as a 
brother of La Trappe. 

He was thinking with too much distrust of himself (and of 
others b3' consequence) as Toplad3' was thinking of himself in 
the little affair in Hyde Park to which I have alluded in the 
former chapter. When Mumford is an honest Fog3', like some 
folks, he will neither distrust his host, nor his compan3', nor 
himself; he will make the best of the hour and the people round 
about him ; he will scorn tumbling over head and heels for his 



388 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

dinner, but he will take and give his part of the good things, 
join in the talk and laugh unaffectedly, nay, actually tumble 
over head and heels, perhaps, if he has a talent that way ; not 
from a wish to show off his powers, but froDi a sheer good- 
humor and desire to oblige. Whether as guest or as enter- 
tainer, 3^our part and business in societ}^ is to make people as 
happ3^ and as easy as you can ; the master gives you his best 
wine and welcome — you give, in 3'our turn, a smiling face, a 
disposition to be pleased and to please : and my good 3'oung 
friend who read this, don't doubt about yourself, or think about 
3'our precious person. When you have got on 3'our best coat 
and waistcoat, and have 3'our dand3' shirt and tie arranged — 
consider these as so man3^ settled things, and go forward and 
through 3'our business. 

That is wh3'' people in what is called the great world are 
commonly better bred than persons less fortunate iu their con- 
dition : not that the3^ are better in realit3% but from circum- 
stances they are never uneas3" about their position in the world ; 
therefore the3^ are more honest and simple : therefore the3' are 
better bred than Growler, who scowls at the great man a de- 
fiance and a determination that he will not be trampled upon : 
or poor Fawner, who goes quivering down on his knees, and 
licks m3- lord's shoes. But I think in our world — at least in 
m3' experience — there are even more Growlers than Fawners. 

It will be seen b3^ the above remark, that a desire to shine 
or to occupy a marked place in societ3' does not constitute m3' 
idea of happiness, or become the character of a discreet Fog3'. 
Time, which has dimmed the lustre of his waistcoats, alla3'ed 
the violence of his feelings, and sobered down his head with 
gra3^, should give to the whole of his life a quiet neutral tinge ; 
out of which calm and reposeful condition an honest old Fog3" 
looks on the world, and tlie struggle there of women and men. 
I doubt whether this is not better than struggling 3'ourself, for 
you preserve 3'our interest and do not lose 3'our temper. Suc- 
ceeding? What is the great use of succeeding? Failing? 
Where is the great harm? It seems to 3'ou a matter of vast 
interest at one time of your life whether 3'ou shall be a lieuten- 
ant or a colonel — whether 3"ou shall or shall not be invited to 
the Duchess's party — whether 3^ou shall get the place 3-ou and 
a hundred other competitors are trying for — whether Miss 
will have 3'Ou or not ; what the deuce does it all matter a few 
years afterwards? Do 3^ou, Jones, mean to intimate a desire 
that History should occupy herself with your paltr3" person- 
ality ? The Future does not care whether you were a captain or 



IN LONDON. 389 

a private soldier. You get a card to the Duchess's part}'^ : it is 
no more or less than a ball, or a breakfast, like other balls or 
breakfasts. You are half distracted because Miss won't have 
3'ou and takes the other fellow, or you get her (as I did 
Mrs. Pacifico) and find that she is quite a different thing from 
what 3'ou expected. Psha ! These things appear as nought 

— when Time passes — Time the consoler — Time the anodyne 

— Time the gray calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to sa}', 
Look, O man, at the vanit}^ of the objects you pursue, and of 
yourself who pursue them ! 

But on the one hand, if there is an allo}^ in all success, is 
there not a something wholesome in all disappointment? To 
endeavor to regard them both benevolent^, is the task of a 
philosopher ; and he who can do so is a very lucky Fogy. 



CHILD'S PARTIES: 

AND A REMONSTRANCE CONCERNING THEM.* 



Sir, — As your publication finds its wa}^ to almost every 
drawing-room table in this metropolis, and is read by the young 
and old in ever}^ famil3^ I beseech jou to give admission to the 
remonstrance of an unhappy parent, and to endeavor to put a 
stop to a practice which appears to me to be increasing dail^^, 
and is likel3^ to operate most injuriously upon the health, 
morals, and comfort of society in general. 

The awful spread of Juvenile Parties, sir, is the fact to 
which I would draw j^our attention. There is no end to those 
entertainments, and if the custom be not speedily checked, 
people will be obliged to fly from London at Christmas, and 
hide their children during the holida3'S. I gave mine warning 
in a speech at breakfast this day, and said with tears in my 
ev'es that if the Juvenile Part3^ system went on, I would take 
a house at Margate next winter, for that, b3^ heavens ! I could 
not bear another Juvenile Season in London. 

If they would but transfer Innocents' Da3' to the summer 
holida3^s, and let the children have their pleasures in Ma3^ or 
June, we might get on. But now in this most ruthless and cut- 

* Addressed to Mr. Punch. 



390 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

throat season of sleet, thaW, frost, wind, snow, mud, and sore 
throats, it is quite a tempting of fate to be going much abroad ; 
and this is the time of all others that is selected for the amuse- 
ment of our little darhngs. 

As the first step towards the remedying of the evil of which 
I complain, I am obliged to look Mr. Punch himself in his ven- 
erable beard, and sa}', ^' You sir, have, by your agents, caused 
not a little of the mischief. I desire that, during Christmas 
time at least, Mr. Leech should be abolished, or sent to take a 
holiday. Judging from his sketches, I should say that he must 
be endowed with a perfectly monstrous organ of philoprogeni- 
tiveness ; he revels in the delineation of the dearest and most 
beautiful little boys and girls in turn-down collars and broad 
sashes, and produces in your Almanack a picture of a child's 
costume ball, in which he has made the little wretches in the 
dresses of every age, and looking so happ}^, beautiful, and 
charming, that 1 have carefully kept the picture from the sight 
of the women and children of m}^ own household, and — I will 
not say burned it, for I had not the heart to do that — but 
locked it away privately, lest they should conspire to have a 
costume ball themselves, and little Polly should insist upon 
appearing in the dress of Anne Boleyne, or little Jacky upon 
turning out as an Ancient Briton." 

An odious, revolting and disagreeable practice, sir, I sa}^, 
ought not to be described in a manner so atrociously pleasing. 
The real satirist has no right to lead the public astray about the 
Juvenile Fete nuisance, and to describe a child's ball as if it 
was a sort of Paradise, and the little imps engaged as happ}'' 
and pretty as so many cherubs. Thej^ should be drawn, one 
and all, as hideous — disagreeable — distorted — affected — jeal- 
ous of each other — dancing awkwardly' — with shoes too tight 
for them — over-eating themselves at supper — ver}' unwell 
(and deservedly so) the next morning, with Mamma adminis- 
tering a mixture made after the Doctor's prescription, and 
which should be painted awfully black, in an immense large 
teacup, and (as might be shown b}^ the horrible expression on 
the little patient's face) of the most disgusting flavor. Banish, 
1 say, that Mr. Leech during Christmas time, at least ; for, by 
a misplaced kindness and absurd fondness for children, he is 
likely to do them and their parents an incalculable quantity of 
harm. 

As every man, sir, looks at the world out of his own eyes 
or spectacles, or in other words, speaks of it as he finds it him- 
self, I will lay before 3'ou ni}* own case, being perfectl}' sure 



IN LONDON. 391 

that man}' another parent will sympathize with me. My fam- 
il}', already inconveniently large, is yet constantly on the in- 
crease, and it is out of the question that Mrs. Spec * should go 
to parties, as that admirable woman has the best of occupa- 
tions at home ; where she is always nursing the bab}'. Hence 
it becomes the father's dut}^ to accompany' his children abroad, 
and to give them pleasure during the hoHda3's. 

Our own place of residence is in South Carolina Place, Clap- 
ham Road, North, in one of the most health}- of the suburbs 
of this great City. But our relatives and acquaintances are 
numerous ; and they are spread all over the town and its out- 
skirts. Mrs. S. has sisters married, and dwelling respectively 
in Islington, Haverstock Hill, Bedford Place, Upper Baker 
Street, and Tyburn Gardens ; besides the children's grand- 
mother, Kensington Gravel Pits, whose parties we are all of 
course obliged to attend. A very great connection of ours, and 
nearly related to a B-r-n-t and M.P., lives not a hundred miles 
from B-lg-ve Square. I could enumerate a dozen more places 
where our kinsmen or intimate friends are — heads of families 
every one of them, with their quivers more or less full of little 
arrows. 

What is the consequence ? I herewith send it to you in the 
shape of these eighteen enclosed notes, written in various styles 
more or less correct and corrected, from Miss Fanny's, aged 
seven, who hopes in round hand that her dear cousins will come 
and drink tea with heron New Year's Eve, her birthday, — to 
that of the Governess of the B-r-n-t in question, who requests 
the pleasure of our company at a ball, a conjurer, and a Christ- 
mas Tree. Mrs. Spec, for the valid reason above stated, can- 
not frequent these meetings : I am the deplorable chaperon of 
the young people. I am called upon to conduct my family five 
miles to tea at six o'clock. No count is taken of our personal 
habits, hours of dinner, or intervals of rest. We are made 
the victims of an infantile conspiracy, nor will the lady of the 
house hear of any revolt or denial. 

"Why," says she, with the spirit which becomes a woman 
and mother, "you go to your man's parties eagerly enough: 
what an unnatural wretch you must be to grudge your children 
their pleasures ! " She looks round, sweeps all six of them 
into her arras, whilst the baby on her lap begins to bawl, and 
you are assailed by seven pairs of imploring eyes, against which 
there is no appeal. You must go. If you are dying of lum- 
bago, if you are engaged to the best of dinners, if you are 

* A name sometimes assumed by the writer in his contributions to Punch, 



392 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

longing to stop at home and read Macaulay, you must give up 

all and go. 

And it is not to one party or two, but to almost all. You 
must go to the Gravel Pits, otherwise the grandmother will cut 
the children out of her will, and leave her property to her other 
grandchildren. If you refuse Islington, and accept Tyburn 
Gardens, 3'ou sneer at a poor relation, and acknowledge a rich 
one readily enough. If you decline Tyburn Gardens, you fling 
away the chances of the poor dear children in life, and the hopes 
of the cadetship for little Jacky. If you go to Hampstead, 
having declined Bedford Place, it is because you never refuse an 
invitation to Hampstead, where they make much of you, and 
Miss Maria is pretty, (as you think, though your wife doesn't,) 
and do not care for the Doctor in Bedford Place. And if you 
accept Bedford Place, you dare not refuse Upper Baker Street, 
because there is a coolness between the two famiUes, and 
you must on no account seem to take part with one or the 
other. 

In this way man}' a man besides m3"self, I dare say, finds 
himself miserably tied down and a helpless prisoner, like Gul- 
liver in the hands of the Lilliputians. Let us just enumerate 
a few of the miseries of the pitiable parental slave. 

In the first place, examine the question in a pecuniary 
point of view. The expenses of children's toilets at this pres- 
ent time are perfectly frightful. 

M}' eldest boy, Gustavus, at home from Dr. Birch's Acad- 
emv, Rodwell Regis, wears turquoise studs, fine linen shirts, 
white waistcoats, and shiny boots : and, when I proposed that 
he should go to a party in Berlin gloves, asked me if I wished 
that he should be mistaken for a footman ? My second, Au- 
gustus, grumbles about getting his elder brother's clothes, nor 
could he be brought to accommodate himself to Gustavus's 
waistcoats at all, had not his mother coaxed him by the loan 
of her chain and watch, which latter the child broke after man}' 
desperate attempts to wind it up. As for the little fellow, 
Adolphus, his mother has him attired in a costume partly 
Scotch, partly Hungarian, mostly buttons, and with a Louis 
Quatorze hat and scarlet feather, and she curls this child's hair 
with her own blessed tongs every night. 

I wish she would do as much for the girls, though : but no, 
Monsieur Floridor must do that : and accordingly every day 
this season, that abominable little Frenchman, who is, I have 
no doubt, a Red Republican, and smells of cigars and hair-oil, 
comes over, and, at a cost of eighteenpence joar tete^ figs out 



IN LONDON. 393 

m}^ little creatures' heads with fixature, bandoline, crinoline — 
the deuce knows what. 

The bill for silk stockings, sashes, white frocks, is so enor- 
mous that I have not been able to pay m}^ own tailor these 
three years. 

The bill for flies to 'Amstid and back, to Hizzlington and 
take up, &c., is fearful. The drivers, in this extra weather, 
must be paid extra, and they drink extra. Having to go to 
Hackney in the snow, on the night of the 5th of January, our 
man was so hopelessly inebriated, that I was compelled to get 
out and drive m3'self ; and I am now, on what is called Twelfth 
Da}^ (with, of course, another child's party before me for the 
evening), writing this from m}^ bed, sir, with a severe cold, a 
violent toothache, and a most acute rheumatism. 

As I hear the knock of our medical man, w^hom an anxious 
wife has called in, I close this letter ; asking leave, however, 
if I survive, to return to this painful subject next week. And, 
wishing j^ou a merry ! New Year, I have the honor to be, dear 
Mr, Punchy 

Your constant reader. 

Spec. 

II. 

Conceive, Sir, that in spite of m^^ warning and entreaty 
we were invited to no less than three Child's Parties last Tues- 
day- ; to two of which a lady in this house, who shall be name- 
less, desired that her children should be taken. On Wednesday 
we had Dr. Lens's microscope ; and on Thursday 30U were good 
enough to send me your box for the Haymarket Theatre ; and of 
course Mrs. S. and tlie children are extremely obliged to you for 
the attention. I did not mind the theatre so much. I sat in the 
back of the box and fell asleep. I wish there was a room with 
easy-chairs and silence enjoined, whither parents might retire, in 
the houses where Children's Parties are given. But no — it 
would be of no use : the fiddling and pianoforte-playing and 
scuffling and laughing of the children would keep you awake. 

I am looking out in the papers for some eligible schools where 
there shall be no vacations — I can't bear these festivities much 
longer. I begin to hate children in their evening dresses : when 
children are attired in those absurd best clothes, what can 30U 
expect from them but affectation and airs of fa'^hion ? One day 
last year, sir, having to conduct the two young h.^ies who then 
frequented juvenile parties, I found them, upon entering the fly, 
into which the^' had preceded me under convoy of their maid — ■ 



394 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

I found them — in what a condition, think you ? Why, with the 
skirts of their stiff muslin frocks actually thrown over their 
heads, so that they should not crumple in the carriage ! A child 
who cannot go into society but with a muslin frock in this po- 
sition, I sa}", had best stay in the nursery in her pinafore. If 
you are not able to enter the world with your dress in its proper 
place, I say stay at home. I blushed, sir, to see that Mrs. S. 
didn''t blush when I informed her of this incident, but only 
laughed in a strange indecorous manner, and said that the 
girls must keep their dresses neat. — Neatness as much as you 
please, but I should have thought Neatness would wear her 
frock in the natural wav. 

And look at the children when the}' arrive at their place of 
destination ; what processes of coquetry the}' are made to go 
through ! They are first carried into a room where there are 
pins, combs, looking-glasses, and lady's-maids, who shake the 
children's ringlets out, spread abroad their great immense 
sashes and ribbons, and finall}^ send them full sail into the 
dancing-room. With what a monstrous precocity they ogle 
their own faces in the looking-glasses ; I have seen my boys, 
Gustavus and Adolphus, grin into the glass, and arrange their 
curls or the ties of their neck-cloths with as much eagerness as 
any grown-up man could show, who was going to pa}- a visit to 
the ladj' of his heart. With what an abominable complacency 
they get out their little gloves, and examine their silk stockings ! 
How can they be natural or unaffected when they are so pre- 
posterously conceited about their fine clothes? The other daj'' 
we met one of Gus's schoolfellows. Master ChaflTers, at a part}', 
who entered the room with a little gibus hat under his arm, and 
to be sure made his bow with the aplomh of a dancing-master of 
sixty ; and my boys, who I suspect envied their comrade the 
gibus hat, began to giggle and sneer at him ; and, further to 
disconcert him, Gus goes up to him and says, " Why, ChaflTers, 
you consider yourself'a deuced fine fellow, but there's a straw 
on your trousers." Why shouldn't there be ? And why should 
that poor little boy be called upon to blush because he came to 
a party in a hack-cab? I, for my part, ordered the children 
to walk home on that night, in order to punish them for their 
pride. It rained. Gus wet and spoiled his shiny boots, Dol got 
a cold, and my wife scolded me for cruelty. 

As to the airs which the wretches give themselves about 
dancing, I need not enlarge upon them here, for the dangerous 
artist of the "Rising Generation" has already taken them in 
hand. Not that his satire does the children the least good : 



m LONDON. 395 

t/wy don't see anything absurd in courting pretty girls, or in 
asserting the superiorit}- of their own sex over the female. A 
few nights since, I saw Master Sultan at a juvenile ball, stand- 
ing at the door of the dancing-room, egregiously displajing his 
muslin pocket-handkerchief, and waving it about as if he was in 
doubt to which of the 3'oung beauties he should cast it. " Why 
don't you dance. Master Sultan?" says I. " M}^ good sir," 
he answered, "just look round at those girls, and sa}^ if I can 
dance ? " Blase and selfish now, what will that boy be, sir, when 
his whiskers grow? 

And when 3'ou think how Mrs. Mainchance seeks out rich 
partners for her little boys — how my own admirable Eliza has 
warned her children — "• My dears, I would rather 3'ou should 
dance with 3'our Brown cousins than 3'our Jones cousins," who 
are a little rough in their manners (the fact being, that our sis- 
ter Maria Jones lives at Islington, while Fanny Brown is an 
Upper Baker Street lad}') ; — when I have heard my dear wife, 
I say, instruct our bo}', on going to a party at the Baronet's, 
b}'' no means to neglect his cousin Adeliza, but to dance with 
her as soon as ever he can engage her — what can I sa}', sir, 
but that the world of men and bo3's is the same — that societ}-' 
is poisoned at its source — and that our little chubb3^-cheeked 
cherubim are instructed to be artful and egotistical, when 3'ou 
would think by their faces they were just fresh from heaven. 

Among the very little children, I confess I get a consolation 
as I watch them, in seeing the artless little girls walking after 
the bo3's to whom they incline, and courting them by a hundred 
innocent little wiles and caresses, putting out their little hands 
and inviting them to dances, seeking them out to pull crackers 
with them, and begging them to read the mottoes, and so forth 
— this is as it should be — this is natural and kindl}^ The 
women, b}* rights, ought to court the men ; and they would if 
we but left them alone.* 

And, absurd as the games are, I own I like to see some 
thirt3^ or fort3^ of the creatures on the floor in a ring, playing at 
petitsjeux^ of all ages and sexes, from the most insubordinate 
infanthood of Master Jacky, who will crawl out of the circle, 
and talks louder than an3'bod3' in it, though he can't speak, to 
blushing Miss Lil3% who is just conscious that she is sixteen — 
I own, I say, that I can't look at such a circlet or chaplet of 
children, as it were, in a hundred different colors, laughing and 
happy, without a sort of pleasure. How the}^ laugh, how they 

* On our friend's manuscript there is written, in a female handwriting 
" Vulgar, immodest. — E. S." 



396 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

twine together, how thev wave about, as if the wind was pass- 
ing over the flowers ! Poor Uttle buds, shall you bloom long? 
— "(I then say to myself, by way of keeping up a proper frame 
of mind) — shall frosts nip you, or tempests scatter you, drought 
wither you, or rain beat you down? And oppressed with my 
feelings, I go below and get some of the weak negus with which 
Children's Parties are refreshed. 

At those houses where the magic lantern is practised, I still 
sometimes get a degree of pleasure, by hearing the voices of 
the children in the dark, and the absurd remarks which they 
make as the various scenes are presented — as, in the dissolv- 
ing views, Cornhill changes into Grand Cairo, as Cupid comes 
down with a wreath, and pops it on to the head of the Duke of 
Wellington, as Saint Peter's at Rome suddenh' becomes illumi- 
nated, and fireworks, not the least like real fireworks, begin to 
go off from Fort St. Angelo — it is certainty not unpleasant 
to hear the " o-o-o's of the audience, and the little children 
chattering in the darkness. But I think I used to like the 
" Pull devil, pull baker," and the Doctor Syntax of our youth, 
much better than all j'our new-fangled dissolving views and 
pyrotechnic imitations. 

As for the conjurer, I am sick of him. There is one con- 
jurer I have met so often during this year and the last, that the 
man looks quite guilt}" when the folding doors are opened and 
he sees my party of children, and myself amongst the seniors in 
the back rows. He forgets his jokes when he beholds me : his 
wretched claptraps and waggeries fail him : he trembles, falters, 
and turns pale. 

I on my side too feel reciprocally uneasy. What right have 
we to be staring that creature out of his silly countenance? 
Very likely he has a wife and family dependent for their 
bread upon his antics. I should be glad to admire them if I 
could ; but how do so ? When I see him squeeze an orange or 
a cannon-ball right away into nothing, as it were, or multiply 
either into three cannon-balls or oranges, I know the others are 
in his pocket somewhere. I know that he doesn't put out his 
eye when he sticks the penknife into it : or that after swallow- 
ing (as the miserable humbug pretends to do) a pocket-hand- 
kerchief, he cannot by any possibility convert it into a quantity 
of colored wood-shavings. These flimsy articles may amuse 
children, but not us. I think I shall go and sit down below 
amongst the servants whilst this wretched man pursues his 
idiotic delusions before the children. 

And the supper, sir, of which our darlings are made to par- 



IN LONDON. 397 

take. Have they dined? I ask. Do they have a supper at 
home, and wh}^ do not they? Because it is unwliolesome. If 
it is unwholesome, wh}'^ do they have supper at all? I have 
mentioned the wretched quality of the negus. How they can 
administer such stuff to children I can't think. Though only 
last week I heard a little boy. Master Swilby, at Miss Waters's, 
say that he had drunk nine glasses of it, and eaten I don't 
know how many tasteless sandwiches and insipid cakes ; after 
which feats he proposed to fight my 3'oungest son. 

As for that Christmas Tree, which we have from the Ger- 
mans — an^'body who knows what has happened to them may 
judge what will befall us from following their absurd customs. 
Are we to put up pine-trees in our parlors, with wax-candles 
and bonbons^ after the manner of the ancient Druids? Are 
we ... . ? 

. . M}^ dear sir, my manuscript must here abruptly termi- 
nate. Mrs. S. has just come into m}' study, and my daughter 
enters, grinning behind her, with twenty-five little notes, an- 
nouncing that Master and Miss Spec request the pleasure of 
Miss Brown, Miss F. Brown, and M. A. Brown's company 
on the 25th inst. There is to be a conjurer in the back draw- 
ing-room, a magic lantern in my stud}, a Christmas Tree in the 
dining-room, dancing in the drawing-room — " And, m}^ dear, 
we can have whist in our bedroom," my wife says. "You 
know we must be civil to those who have been so kind to our 
darling children." 

Spec. 



THE CURATE'S WALK. 

I. 

It was the third out of the four bell-buttons at the door 
at which my friend the curate pulled ; and the summons was 
answered after a brief interval. 

I must premise that the house before which we stopped was 
No. 14, Sedan Buiklings, leading out of Great Guelph Street, 
Dettingen Street, CuUoden Street, Minden Square ; and Upper 
and Lower Caroline Row form part of the same quarter — a 
very queer and solemn quarter to walk in, I think, and one 
which always suggests Fielding's novels to me. I can fancy 
Captain Booth strutting out of the very door at which we were 
standing, in tarnished lace, with his hat cocked over his eyQf 



398 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

and his hand on his hanger ; or Lad}^ Bellaston's chair and 
bearers coming swinging down Great Guelph Street, which we 
have just quitted to enter Sedan Buildings. 

Sedan Buildings is a little flagged square, ending abruptly 
with the huge walls of Bluck's Brewery. The houses, by man^" 
degi*ees smaller than the large deca3'ed tenements in Great 
Guelph Street, are still not uncomfortable, although shabby. 
There are brass-plates on the doors, two on some of them : or 
simple names, as " Lunt," " Padgemore,",&c. (as if no other 
statement about Lunt and Padgemore were necessary at all) 
under the bells. There are pictures of mangles before two of 
the houses, and a gilt arm with a hammer sticking out from 
one. I never saw a Goldbeater. What sort of a being is he, 
that he always sticks out his ensign in dark, mould}', l,onely, 
drearj"^, but somewhat respectable places? What powerful 
Mulciberian fellows the}' must be, those Goldbeaters, whacking 
and thumping with huge mallets at the precious metals all day. 
I wonder what is Goldbeaters' skin ? and do the}' get impreg- 
nated with the metal? and are their great arms under their clean 
shirts on Sundays, all gilt and shining? 

It is a quiet, kind, respectable place somehow, in spite of 
its shabbiness. Two pewter pints and a jolly little half-pint 
are hanging on the railings in perfect confidence, basking in 
what little sun comes into the Court. A group of small chil- 
dren are making an ornament of oyster-shells in one corner. 
Who has that half-pint? Is it for one of those small ones, 
or for some delicate female recommended to take beer? The 
windows in the Court, upon some of which the sun glistens, are 
not cracked, and pretty clean ; it is only the black and dreary 
look behind which gives them a poverty-stricken appearance. 
No curtains or blinds. A bird-cage and very few pots of 
flowers here and there. This — with the exception of a milk- 
man talking to a whity-brown woman, made up of bits of 
flannel and strips of faded chintz and calico seemingly, and 
holding a long bundle which cried — this was all I saw in Sedan 
Buildings while we were waiting until the door should open. 

At last the door was opened, and by a porteress so small, 
that I wonder how she ever could have lifted up the latch. She 
bobbed a curtsy, and smiled at the Curate, whose face gleamed 
with benevolence too, in reply to that salutation. 

''Mother not at home?" says Frank Whitestock, patting 
the child on the head. 

" Mother's out charing, sir," replied the girl ; " but please 
to walk up, sir." And she led the way up one and two pair of 



IN LONDON. 399 

stairs to that apartment in the house which is called the second- 
floor front ; in which was the abode of the charwoman. 

There were two joiing persons in the room, of the respec- 
tive ages of eight and five, I should think. She of five 3'ears 
of age was hemming a duster, being perched on a chair at the 
table in the middle of the room. The elder, of eight, politely 
wii)ed a chair with a cloth for the accommodation of the good- 
natured Curate, and came and stood between his knees, im- 
mediately alongside of his umbrella, which also reposed there 
and which she b}' no means equalled in height. 

"These children attend my school at St. Timothy's," Mr. 
Whitestock said, " and Betsy keeps the house while her mother 
is from home." 

Anything cleaner or neater than this house it is impossible 
to conceive. There was a big bed, which must liave been the 
resting-place of the whole of this little family. There were 
three or four religious prints on the walls ; besides two framed 
and glazed, of Prince Coburg and the Princess Charlotte. 
There were brass candlesticks, and a lamb on the chimne}'- 
piece, and a cupboard in the corner, decorated with near half 
a dozen plates, yellow bowls, and crocker3\ And on the table 
there were two or three bits of dry bread, and a jug with water, 
with which these three j^oung people (it being then nearly three 
o'clock) were about to take their meal called tea. 

That little Betsy who looks so small is nearly ten 3^ears old : 
and has been a mother ever since the age of about five. I mean 
to sa}', that her own mother having to go out upon her charing 
operations, Betsy assumes command of the room during her 
parent's absence : has nursed her sisters from babyhood up to 
the present time : keeps order over them, and the house clean 
as you see it ; and goes out occasionally and transacts the 
family purchases of bread, moist sugar, and mother's tea. 
They dine upon bread, tea and breakfast upon bread when 
they have it, or go to bed without a morsel. Their holida}' is 
Sunday, which they spend at Church and Sunday-school. The 
3'ounger children scarcel}' ever go out, save on that day, but sit 
sometimes in the sun, which comes in prett}' pleasantly : some- 
J*^ times blue in the cold, for thej- very seldom see a fire except to 
heat irons b}^, when mother has a job of linen to get up. Father 
was a journeyman bookbinder, who died four 3'ears ago, and is 
)uried among thousands and thousands of the nameless dead 
who lie crowding the black churchyard of St. Timothy's parish. 

The Curate evidently took especial pride in Victoria, the 
youngest of these three children of the charwoman, and caused 






I 



400 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

Betsj^ to fetch a book which lay at the window, and bade her 
read. It was a Missionary Register which the Curate opened 
hap-hazard, and this baby began to read out in an exceedingly 
clear and resolute voice about — 

"The island of Raritongo is the least frequented of all 
the Caribbean Archipelago. Wank}fungo is at four leagues 
S. E. by E., and the peak of the crater of Shuagnahua is dis- 
tinctly visible. The ' Irascible ' entered Raritongo Bay on the 
evening of Thursday 29th, and the next day the Rev. Mr. 
• Flethers, Mrs. Flethers, and their nine children, and Shang- 
pooky, the native converted at Cacabawgo, landed and took up 
their residence at the house of Ratatatua, the Principal Chief, 
who entertained us with yams and a pig," &c. &c. &c. 

"Raritongo, Wankyfungo, Archipelago." I protest this 
little woman read off each of these long words with an ease 
which perfectly astonished me. Many a lieutenant in her 
Majesty's Heavies would be puzzled with words half the length. 
Whitestock, by way of reward for her scholarship, gave her 
another pat on the head ; having received which present with a 
curtsy, she went and put the book back into the window, and 
clambering back into the chair, resumed the hemming of the 
blue duster. 

I suppose it was the smallness of these people, as well as 
their singular, neat, and tidy behavior, which interested me so. 
Here were three creatures not so high as the table, with all the 
labors, duties, and cares of life upon their little shoulders, work- 
ing and doing their duty like the biggest of my readers ; regular, 
laborious, cheerful, — content with small pittances, practising 
a hundred virtues of thrift and order. 

Elizabeth, at ten years of age, might walk out of this house 
and take the command of a small establishment. She can wash, 
get up linen, cook, make purchases, and buy bargains. If I 
were ten jxars old and three feet in height I would marry her, 
and we would go and live in a cupboard, and share the little 
half-pint pot for dinner. 'Melia, eight years of age, though 
inferior in accomplishments to her sister, is her equal in size, 
and can wash, scrub, hem, go errands, put her hand to the 
dinner, and make herself generally useful. In a word, she is 
fit to be a little housemaid, and to make everything but the 
beds, which she cannot as 3'et reach up to. As for Victoria's 
qualifications, they have been mentioned before. I wonder 
whether the Princess Alice can read off " Raritongo," &c., as 
glibly as this surprising little animal. 

I asked the Curate's permission to make these young ladies 



IN LONDON. 401 

a present, and accordingly produced the sum of sixpence to be 
divided amongst the tliree. " What will 3"ou do with it?" I 
said, la3'ing down the coin. 

They answered, all three at once, and in a little chorus, 
" We'll give it to mother." This verdict caused the disburse- 
ment of another sixpence, and it was explained to tliem that 
the sum was for their own private pleasures, and each was 
called upon to declare wh^t she would purchase. 

Elizabeth says, " I would like twopenn'orth of meat, if ^j-ou 
please, sir." 

'Melia : " Ha'porth of treacle, three-farthings'- worth of milk, 
and the same of fresh bread." 

Victoria, speaking very quick, and gasping in an agitated 
manner : ' ' Ha'pny — aha — orange, and ha'pny — aha — apple, 
and ha'pn}' — aha — treacle, and^ — and — " here her imagi- 
nation failed her. She did not know what to do with the rest 
of the money. 

At this 'Melia actually interposed, " Suppose she and Vic- 
toria subscribed a farthing apiece out of their mone}'^, so that 
Betsy might have a quarter of. a pound of meat?" She added 
that her sister wanted it, and that it would do her good. Upon 
m}' word, she made the proposal and the calculations in an in- 
stant, and all of her own accord. And before we left them, Betsy 
had put on the queerest little black shawl and bonnet, and had 
a mug and a basket ready to receive the purchases in question. 

Sedan Buildings has a particular!}^ friendly look to me since 
that day. Peace be with you, O thrift3^ kindty, simple, loving 
little maidens ! Ma}' their vo3^age in life prosper ! Think of 
the great journe}' before them, and the little cock-boat manned 
by babies venturing over the great stormy ocean. 



n. 

Following the steps of little Betsy with her mug and bas- 
ket, as she goes pattering down the street, we watch her into a 
grocer's shop, where a startling placard with " Down Again ! " 
written on it announces that the Sugar Market is still in a de- 
pressed condition — and where she no doubt negotiates the pur- 
chase of a certain quantity of molasses. A little further on, in 
Lawfeldt Street, is Mr. Filch's fine silversmith's shop, where a 
man may stand for a half-hour and gaze with ravishment at the 
beautiful gilt cups and tankards, the stunning waistcoat chains, 
the little white cushions laid out with dehghtful diamond pins, 
gold horseshoes and splinter-bars, pearl owls, turquoise lizards 

26 



402 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

and dragons, enamelled monkeys, and all sorts of agreeable 
monsters for 3'our neck-cloth. If I live to be a hundred, or if 
the girl of ni}^ heart were waiting for me at the corner of the 
street, I never could pass Mr. Filch's shop without having a 
couple of minutes' good stare at the window. I like to fanc}^ 
myself dressed up in some of the jewellery. " Spec, 3'ou 
rogue," I sa}', " suppose 3^ou were to get leave to wear three oi* 
four of those rings on your fingers; to stick that opal, round 
which twists a brilliant serpent with a rub}^ head, into your blue 
satin neck-cloth ; and to sport that gold jack-chain on 3'our waist- 
coat. You might walk in the Park with that black whalebone 
prize-riding- whip, which has a head the size of a snuff-box, sur- 
mounted with a silver jockey on a silver race-horse ; and wliat 
a sensation you would create, if 3^ou fook that large ram's horn 
with the cairngorum top out of 3'our pocket, and offered a pinch 
of rappee to the compan3^ round ! " A little attorne3''s clerk is 
staring in at the window, in whose mind very similar ideas are 
passing. What would he not give to wear that gold pin next 
Sundaj- in his blue hunting neck-cloth ? The ball of* it is almost 
as big as those which are painted over the side door of Mr. 
Filch's shop, which is down that passage which leads into 
Trotter's Court. 

I have dined at a house where the silver dishes and covers 
came from Filch's, let out to their owner by Mr. Filch for the 
da3% and in charge of the grave-looking man whom I mistook 
for the butler. Butlers and ladies'-maids innumerable have 
audiences of Mr. Filch in his back-parlor. There are suits 
of jewels which he and his shop have known for a half-centur3^ 
past, so often have the3^ been pawned to him. "When we read 
in the Court Journal of Lad3' Fitzball's head-dress of lappets 
and superb diamonds, it is because the jewels get a da3^ rule 
from Filch's, and come back to his iron box as soon as the 
drawing-room is over. These jewels become historical among 
pawnbrokers. It was here that Lad3' Prigsb3" brought her dia- 
monds one evening of last 3'ear, and desired hurriedl3' to raise 
two thousand pounds upon them, when Filch respectfiill3' 
pointed out to her ladyship that she had pawned the stones 
already to his comrade, Mr. Tubal, of Charing Cross. And, 
taking his hat, and putting the case under his arm, he went 
with her ladyship to the hack-cab in which she had driven to 
Lawfeldt Street, entered the vehicle with her, and the3' drove 
in silence to the back entrance of her mansion in Monmouth 
Square, where Mr. Tubal's young man was still seated in the 
hall, waiting until her ladyship should be undressed. 



IN LONDON. 403 

"We walked round the splendid shining shop and down the 
passage, which would be dark but that the gas-lit door is always 
swinging to and fro, as the people who cOme to pawn go in and 
out. You may be sure there is a gin-shop handy to all pawn- 
brokers'. 

A lean man in a dingy dress is walking lazily up and down the 
flags of Trotter's Court. His ragged trousers trail in the slim}^ 
mud there. The doors of the pawnbroker's, and of the gin- 
shop on the other side, are banging to and fro : a little girl 
comes out of the former, with a tattered old handkerchief, and 
goes up and gives something to the dingy man. It is ninepence, 
just raised on his waistcoat. The man bids the child to " cut 
away home," and when she is clear out of the court, he looks 
at us with a lurking scowl and walks into the gin-shop doors, 
which swing always opposite the pawnbroker's shop. 

Why should he have sent the waistcoat wrapped in that 
ragged old cloth? Why should he have sent the child into 
the pawnbroker's box, and not have gone himself? He did not 
choose to let her see him go into the gin-shop — why drive her 
in at the opposite door ? The child knows well enough whither 
he is gone. She might as well have carried an old waistcoat 
in her hand through the street as a ragged napkin. A sort of 
vanity, you see, drapes itself in that dirty rag ; or is it a kind of 
debauched shame, which does not like to go naked? The fancy 
can follow the poor girl up the black alley, up the black stairs, 
into the bare room, where mother and children are starving, 
while the lazy ragamuffin, the family bullj-^, is gone into the gin- 
shop to '' try our celebrated Cream of the Vallej^," as the bill 
in red letters bids him." 

-' I waited in this court the other day," Whitestock said, 
''just like that man, while a friend of mine went in to take 
her husband's tools out of pawn — an honest man — a journey- 
man shoemaker, who lives hard by." And we went to call 
on the journe3'man shoemaker — Handle's Buildings — two-pair 
back — over a blacking manufactory. The blacking was made 
by one manufactor, who stood before a tub stirring up his pro- 
duce, a good deal of which — and nothing else — was on the 
floor. We passed through this emporium*, which abutted on a 
dank, steaming little court, and up the narrow stair to the two- 
pair back. 

The shoemaker was at work with his recovered tools, and 
his wife was making woman's shoes (an inferior branch of the 
business) by him. A shrivelled child was lying on the bed in 
the corner of the room. There was no bedstead, and indeed 



404 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

scarcely any furniture, save the little table on which lay his 
tools and shoes — a fair-haired, lank, handsome 3'Oung man, 
with a wife who may have been pretty once, in better times, 
and before starvation pulled her down. She had but one thin 
gown ; it clung to a frightfully emaciated little body. 

Their story was the old one. The man had been in good 
work, and had the fever. The clothes had been pawned, the 
furniture and bedstead had been sold, and the}^ slept on the 
mattress ; the mattress went, and the}' slept on the floor ; 
the tools went, and the end of all things seemed at hand, when 
the gracious apparition of the Curate, with his umbrella, came 
and cheered those stricken-down poor folks. 

The journeyman shoemaker must have been astonished at 
such a sight. He is not, or was not a church-goer. He is a 
man of " advanced" opinions ; believing that priests are hypo- 
crites, and that clergymen in general drive about in coaches- 
and-four, and eat a tithe-pig a da}'. This proud priest got Mr. 
Crispin a bed to lie upon, and some soup to eat ; and (being 
the treasurer of certain good folks of his parish, whose charities 
he administers) as soon as the man was strong enough to work, 
the curate lent him money wherewith to redeem his tools, and 
which our friend is paying back by instalments at this day. 
And any man who has seen these two honest men talking to- 
gether, would have said the shoemaker was the haughtiest of 
the two. 

We paid one more morning visit. This was with an order 
for work to a tailor of reduced circumstances and enlarged fam- 
ily. He had been a master, and was now forced to take work 
by the job. He who had commanded many men, was now 
fallen down to the ranks again. His wife told us all about his 
misfortunes. She is evidently very proud of them. " He failed 
for seven thousand pounds," the poor woman said, three or four 
times during the course of our visit. It gave tier husband a 
sort of dignity to have been trusted for so much money. 

The Curate must have heard that story many times, to whicli 
he now listened with great patience in the tailor's house — a 
large, clean, dreary, faint-looking room, smelling of poverty. 
Two little stunted, ^-'ellow-headed children, with lean pale faces 
and large protruding eyes, were at the window staring with all 
their might at Guy Fawkes, who was passing in the street, and 
making a great clattering and shouting outside, while the luck- 
less tailor's wife was prating within about her husband's bygone 
riches. I shall not in a hurry forget the picture. The empty 
room in a dreary background ; the tailor's wife in brown, stalk- 



m LoNDOj^. 4o5 

ing up and down the planks, tallying endlessly ; the solemn 
children staring out of the window as the sunshine fell on their 
faces, and honest Whitestock seated, listening, with the tails of 
his coat through the chair. 

His business over with the tailor, we start again ; Frank 
Whitestock trips through alley after alley, never getting any 
mud on his boots, somehow, and his white neck-cloth making a 
wonderful shine in those shady places. He has all sorts of 
acquaintance, chiefly amongst the extreme 3'outh, assembled at 
the doors or about the gutters. There was one small person 
occupied in emptying one of these rivulets with an o^^ster-shell, 
for the purpose, apparently, of making an artificial lake in a 
hole hai'd by, whose solitary gravit}' and business air struck me 
much, while the Curate was very deep in conversation with a 
small coalman. A half-dozen of her comrades were congre- 
gated round a scraper and on a grating hard b}^, plajing with 
a mang3' little puppy, the property of the Curate's friend. 

I know it is wrong to give large sums of mone}^ away pro- 
miscuously, but I could not help dropping a penu}^ into the 
child's oyster-shell, as she came forward holding it before her 
like a tray. At first her expression was one rather of wonder 
than of pleasure at this influx of capital, and was certainly 
quite worth the small charge of one penny, at which it was pur- 
chased. 

For a moment she did not seem to know what steps to 
take ; but, having communed in her own mind, she presently 
resolved to turn them towards a neighboring apple-stall, in the 
direction of which she went without a single word of compli- 
ment passing between us. Now, the children round the scraper 
were witnesses to the transaction. " He's give her a penny," 
one remarked to another, with hopes miserabl}^ disappointed 
that they might come in for a similar present. 

She walked on to the apple-stall meanwhile, holding her 
penn}^ behind her. And what did the other little ones do? 
They put down the puppy as if it had been so much dross. 
And one after another they followed the penny-piece to the 
apple-stall. 



406 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 



A DINNER IN THE CITY. 

I. 

Out of a mere love for variety and contrast, I think we 
cannot do better, after leaving the wretched Whitestock among 
his starving parishioners, than transport ourselves to the Cit}', 
where we are invited to dine with the Worshipful Compan}-^ of 
Bellows-Menders, at their splendid Hall in Manow-pudding 
Lane. 

Next to eating good dinners, a health}^ man with a benev- 
olent turn of mind must like, I think, to read about them. 
When I was a hoj, I had by heart the Barmecide's feast in 
the " Arabian Nights;" and the culinary passages in Scott's 
novels (in which works there is a deal of good eating) always 
were m}^ favorites. The Homeric poems are full, as everybody 
knows, of roast and boiled : and every year I look forward 
with pleasure to the newspapers of the 10th of November for 
the metiu of the Lord Ma3'or's feast, which is sure to appear 
in those journals. What student of histor}' is there who does 
not remember the Cit}' dinner given to the Allied Sovereigns 
in 1814? It is good even now, and to read it ought to make 
a man hungr}', had he had five meals that day. In a word, I had 
long, long yearned in my secret heart to be present at a City 
festival. The last j^ear's papers had a bill of fare commen- 
cing with " four hundred tureens of turtle, each containing five 
pints ; " and concluding with the pineapples and ices of the des- 
sert. " Fancy two thousand pints of turtle, my love," I have 
often said to Mrs. Spec, •' in a vast silver tank, smoking fra- 
grantly, with lovely green islands of calipash and calipee float- 
ing about — wh}', my dear, if it had been invented in the time 
of Vitellius he would have bathed in it ! " 

"He would have been a nasty wretch," Mrs. Spec said, who 
thinks that cold mutton is the most wholesome food of man. 
However, when she heard what great company was to be pres- 
ent at the dinner, the Ministers of State, the Foreign Ambas- 
sadors, some of the bench of Bishops, no doubt the Judges, 
and a great portion of the Nobility, she was pleased at the card 
Avhich was sent to her husband, and made a neat tie to *my 
white neck-cloth before I set off on the festive journey. She 
warned me to be very cautious, and obstinately refused to allow 
me the Chubb door-key. 



IN LONDON. 407 

The very card of invitation is a curiosity. It is almost as 
big as a tea-tra}^ It gives one ideas of a vast, enormous hos- 
pitality. Gog and Magog in liver}'^ might leave it at your door. 
If a man is to eat up that card, heaven help us, I thought ; the 
Doctor must be called in. Indeed, it was a Doctor who pro- 
cured me the placard of invitation. Like all medical men who 
have published a book upon diet, Pillkington is a great gor- 
mand, and he made a great favor of procuring the ticket for me 
from his brother of the Stock Exchange, who is a Citizen and a 
Bellows-Mender in his corporate capacity. 

We drove in Pillkington's brougham to the place of mangez- 
vous^ through the streets of the town, in the broad daylight, 
dressed out in our white waistcoats and ties ; making a sensa- 
tion upon all beholders b}^ the premature splendor of our appear- 
ance. There is something grand iij that hospitality of the 
citizens, who -not onl}^ give you more to eat than other people, 
but who begin earlier than anybody else. Major Bangles, Cap- 
tain Canterbury, and a host of the fashionables of my acquaint- 
ance, were taking their morning's ride in the Park as we drove 
through. You should have seen how they stared at us ! It 
gave me a pleasure to be able to remark mentally, " Look on, 
gents, we too are sometimes invited to the tables of the great." 

We fell in with numbers of carriages as we were approaching 
Citywards, in which reclined gentlemen with white neck-cloths 
— grand equipages of foreign ambassadors, whose uniforms, 
and stars, and gold lace glistened within the carriages, while 
their servants with colored cockades looked splendid without : 
these careered by the Doctor's brougham-horse, which was a 
little fatigued with his professional journeys in the morning. 
General Sir Roger Bluff, K.C.B., and Colonel Tucker, were 
stepping into a cab at the United Service Club as we passed it. 
The veterans blazed in scarlet and gold lace. It seemed strange 
that men so famous, if they did not mount their chargers to go 
to dinner, should ride in any vehicle under a coach-and-six ; and 
instead of having a triumphal car to conduct them to the City, 
should go thither in a ricket}" cab, driven b}' a ragged charioteer 
smoking a dhoodeen. In Cornhill we fell into a line, and 
formed a complete regiment of the aristocrac3\ Crowds were 
gathered round the steps of the old hall in Marrow-pudding 
Lane, and welcomed us nobility and gentry as we stepped out 
of our equipages at the door. The poHcemen could hardly re- 
strain the ardor of these low fellows, and their sarcastic cheers 
were sometimes very unpleasant. There was one rascal who 
made an observation about the size of my white waistcoat, for 



408 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

which I should have liked to sacrifice him on the spot ; but PilU 
kino-ton hurried me, as the policemen did our little brougham, 
to give place to a prodigious fine equipage which followed, with 
immense gray horses, immense footmen in powder, and driven 
b3' a grave coachman in an episcopal wig. 

A veteran ofllcer in scarlet, with silver epaulets, and a pro- 
fuse quantit}' of bullion and silver lace, descended from this 
carriage between the two footmen, and was nearly upset by his 
curling sabre, which had twisted itself between his legs, which 
were cased in duck trousers very tight, except about the knees 
(where they bagged quite freely), and with rich long white 
straps. I thought he must be a great man by the oddness of 
his uniform. 

" Who is the General? " says I, as the old warrior, disen- 
tangling himself from his scimitar, entered the outer hall. " Is 
it the Marquis of Angles*ea, or the Rajah of Sarajsvak? " 

I apoke in utter ignorance, as it appeared. " That ! Pooh," 
saj's Pillkington ; " that is Mr. Champignon, M.P., of White- 
hall Gardens and Fungus Abbey, Citizen and Bellows-Mender. 
His uniform is that of a Colonel of the Diddlesex Militia." 
There was no end to similar mistakes on that day. A vener- 
able man with a blue and gold uniform, and a large crimson 
sword-belt and brass-scabbarded sabre, passed presently, whom 
I mistook for a foreign ambassador at the least ; whereas I 
found out that he was only a Billingsgate Commissioner — and 
a little fellow in a blue livery, which fitted him so badl}' that I 
thought he must be one of the hired waiters of the company, 
who had been put into a coat that didn't belong to him, turned 
out to be a real right honorable gent, who had been a Minister 
once. 

I was conducted up stairs by my friend to the gorgeous 
drawing-room, where the compan}'^ assembled, and where there 
was a picture of George IV. I cannot make out what public 
companies can want with a picture of George IV. A fellow 
with a gold chain, and in a black suit, such as the lamented 
Mr. Cooper wore preparatory to execution in the last act of 
George Barnwell^ bawled out our names as we entered the apart- 
ment. "If m}^ Eliza could hear that gentleman," thought I, 
' ' roaring out the name of ' Mr. Spec ! ' in the presence of at 
least two hundred Earls, Prelates, Judges, and distinguished 
characters ! " It made little impression upon them, however ; 
and I slunk into the embrasure of a window, and watched the 
company. 

Every man who came into the room was, of course, ushered 



II 



IN LONDON. 409 

in with a roar. ' ' His Excellenc}^ the Minister of Topinambo ! '* 
the usher yelled ; and the Minister appeared, bowing and in 
tights. "Mr. Hoggin! The Right Honorable the Earl of 
Bareacres ! Mr. Snog ! Mr. Braddle ! Mr. Alderman Moodle ! 
Mr. Justice Bunker! Lieut. -Gen. Sir Roger Bluff! Colonel 
Tucker ! Mr. Tims ! " with the same emphasis and mark of 
admiration for us all as it were. The Warden of the Bellows- 
Menders came forward and made a profusion of bows to the 
various distinguished guests as they arrived. He, too, was in 
a court-dress, with a sword and bag. His lady must like so to 
behold him turning out in arms and ruffles, shaking hands with 
Ministers, and bowing over his wineglass to their Excellencies 
the Foreign Ambassadors. 

To be in a room with these great people gave me a thousand 
sensations of joy. Once, L am positive, the Secretar}^ of the 
Tape and Sealing- Wax Office looked at me, and turning round 
to a noble lord in a red ribbon, evidently asked, " Who is that? " 
Oh, Eliza, Ehza ! How I wish 3'ou had been there ! — or if not 
there, in the ladies' galler}'^ in the dining-hall, when the music 
began, and Mr. Shadrach, Mr. Meshech, and little Jack Old- 
boy (whom I recollect in the part of Cou7it Almaviva any time 
these forty 3'ears), sang Non nobis, Domine. 

But I am advancing matters prematurely. We are not in 
the grand dining-hall as yet. The crowd grows thicker and 
thicker, so that you can't see people bow as they enter any 
more. The usher in the gold chain roars out name after name : 
more ambassadors, more generals, more citizens, capitalists, 
bankers — among them Mr. Rowdy, my banker, from whom I 
shrank guiltily from private financial reasons — and, last and 
greatest of all, " The Right Honorable the Lord Mayor ! " 

That was a shock, such as I felt on landing at Calais for the 
first time ; on first seeing an Eastern bazaar : on first catching 
a sight of Mrs. Spec ; a new sensation, in a word. Till death 
I shall remember that surprise. I saw over the heads of the 
crowd, first a great sword borne up in the air : then a man in a 
fur cap of the shape of a flower-pot ; then I heard the voice 
shouting the august name — the crowd separated. A handsome 
man with a chain and gown stood before me. It was he. He? 
What do I say? It was his Lordship. I cared for nothing till 
dinner-time after that. 

IL 

The glorious company of banqueteers were now pretty well 
all assembled ; and I, for my part, attracted by an irresistible 



410 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

fascination, pushed nearer and nearer m}^ Lord Mayor, and 
surveyed him, as the Generals, Lords, Ambassadors, Judges, 
and other bigwigs rallied round him as their centre, and, being 
introduced to his Lordship and each other, made thernselves 
the most solemn and graceful bows ; as if it had been the object 
of that General's life to meet that Judge ; and as if that Secre- 
tar}^ of the Tape and Sealing-wax Office, having achieved at 
length a presentation to the Lord Ma3'or, had gained the end 
of his existence, and might go home, singing a Nunc dimittis. 
Don Geronimo de Mulligan y Gua3'aba, Minister of the Repub- 
lic of Topinambo (and originally descended from an illustrious 
Irish ancestor, who hewed out with his pickaxe in the Topi- 
nambo mines the steps by which his famil}^ have ascended to 
their present eminence), holding his cocked hat with the 3'ellow 
cockade close over his embroidered coat-tails, conversed with 
Alderman Codshead, that celebrated Statesman, who was also 
in tights, with a sword and bag. 

Of all the articles of the splendid court-dress of our aristoc- 
rac}', I think it is those little bags which I admire most. The 
dear crisp curly little black darlings ! They give a gentleman's 
back an indescribable grace and air of chivalry. The3^ are at 
once manl}', elegant, and useful (being made of sticking-plas- 
ter, which can be applied afterwards to heal mau}^ a wound of 
domestic life). The}^ are something extra appended to men, 
to enable them to appear in the presence of ro3'alty. How 
vastl3^ the idea of a Court increases in solemnit3^ and grandeur 
when you think that a man cannot enter it without a tail ! 

These thoughts passed through m3^ mind, and pleasingly 
diverted it from all sensations of hunger, while man3' friends 
around me were pulling out their watches, looking towards the 
great dining-room doors, rattling at the lock, (the door gasped 
open once or twice, and the nose of a functionar3' on the other 
side peeped in among us and entreated peace,) and vowing it 
was scandalous, monstrous, shameful. If 3'ou ask an assembl3' 
of Englishmen to a feast, and accident or the cook delays it, 
the3^ show their gratitude in this wa3'. Before the supper-rooms 
were thrown open at my friend Mrs. Perkins's ball, I recollect 
Liversage at the door, swearing and growling as if he had met 
with an injury. So I thought the Bellows-Menders' guests 
seemed heaving into mutiny, when the great doors burst open 
in a flood of light, and we rushed, a black streaming crowd, 
into the gorgeous hall of banquet. 

Every man sprang for his place with breathless rapidity. 
We knew where those places were beforehand ; for a cunning 



IN LONDON. 411 

map had been put into the hands of each of us by an officer of 
the Company, where every plate of this grand festival was 
numbered, and each gentleman's place was ticketed off. Mj^ 
wife keeps m}^ card still in her album ; and my dear eldest boy 
(who has a fine genius and appetite) will gaze on it for half an 
hour at a time, whereas he passes b}' the copies of verses and 
the flower-pieces with an entire indifference. » 

The vast hall flames with gas, and is emblazoned all over 
with the arms of b3^gone Bellows-Menders. August portraits 
decorate the walls. The Duke of Kent in scarlet, with a crooked 
sabre, stared me firmly in the face during the whole entertain- 
ment. The Duke of Cumberland, in a hussar uniform, was at 
ni}' back, and I knew was looking down into m}^ plate. The 
e3'es of those gaunt portraits follow 3^ou ever^^where. The 
Prince Regent has been mentioned before. He has his place 
of honor over the Great Bellows-Mender's chair, and surve3^s 
the high table glittering with plate, epergnes, candles, hock- 
glasses, moulds of blancmange stuck over with flowers, gold 
statues holding up baskets of barle3'-sugar, and a thousand 
objects of art. Piles of immense gold cans and salvers rose, up 
in buffets behind this high table ; towards which presentl3^ and 
in a grand procession — the band in the galler3^ overhead blow- 
ing out the Bellows-Menders' march — a score of City trades- 
men and their famous guests walked solemnl3^ between our rows 
of tables. 

Grace was said, not b3^ the professional devotees who sang 
" Non J^obis" at the end of the meal, but b3^ a chaplain some- 
where in the room, and the turtle began. Armies of waiters 
came rushing in with tureens of this broth of the Cit3^ 

There was a gentleman near us — a ver3' lean old Bellows- 
Mender indeed, who had three platefuls. His old hands trem- 
bled, and his plate quivered. with excitement, as he asked again 
and again. That old man is not destined to eat much more of 
the green fat of this life. As he took it, he shook all over like 
the jell3^ in the dish opposite to him. He gasped out a quick 
laugh once or twice to his neighbor, when his two or three old 
tusks showed, still standing up in those jaws which had swal- 
lowed such a deal of calipash. He winked at the waiters, 
knowing them from former banquets. 

This banquet, which I am describing at Christmas, took 
place at the end of May. At that time the vegetables called 
pease were exceedingly scarce, and cost six-and-twent3' shil- 
lings a quart. 

*' There are two hundred quarts of pease," said the old fel- 



412 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

low, winking witli bloodshot e3^es, and a laugh that was per- 
fectly frightful. The}' were consumed with the fragrant ducks, 
by those who were inclined : or with the venison, which now 

came in. 

That was a great sight. On a centre table in the hall, on 
which alread}' stood a cold Baron of Beef — a grotesque piece 
o£ meat — a dish as big as a dish in a pantomime, with a little 
Standard of England stuck into the top of it, as if it were round 
this we were to rall}^ — on this centre table, six men placed as 
many huge dishes under cover ; and at a given signal the mas- 
ter cook and five assistants in white caps and jackets marched 
rapidl}' up to the dish-covers, which being withdrawn, discov- 
ered to our sight six haunches, on which the six carvers, taking 
out six sharp knives from their girdles, began operating. 

It was, I say, like something out of a Gothic romance, or a 
grotesque fairy pantomime. Feudal barons must have dined 
so five hundred years ago. One of those knives may have been 
the identical blade which Walworth plunged into Wat T^'ler's 
ribs, and which was afterwards caught up into the City Arms, 
where it blazes. (Not that an}' man can seriously believe that 
Wat T3'ler was hurt b}^ the dig of the jolly old Ma3'or in the 
red gown and chain, any more than that pantaloon is singed 
by the great poker, which is alwaj's forthcoming at the present 
season.) Here we were practising the noble custom of the 
good old times, imitating our glorious forefathers, ralh'ing 
round our old institutions, like true Britons. These ver}'^ flag- 
ons and platters were in the room before us, ten times as big 
as any we use or want now-a-da^'s. They served us a grace- 
cup as large as a plate-basket, and at the end the}' passed us 
a rosewater dish, into which Pepys might have dipped his nap- 
kin. Pepys? — what do I say? Richard III., Coeur-de-Lion, 
Guy of Warwick, Gog and Magog. I don't know how antique 
the articles are. 

Conversation, rapid and befitting the place and occasion, 
went on all round. "Waiter, where's the turtle-fins?" — 
Gobble, gobble. " Hice Punch or My deary, sir?" " Smelts 
or salmon, Jowler my boy?" "Always take cold beef after 
turtle." — Hobble-gobble. " These year pease have no taste." 
Hobble-gobbleobble. "Jones, a glass of 'Ock with you? 
Smith, jine us? Waiter, three 'Ocks. S., mind your manners ! 
There's Mrs. S. a-looking at you from the gallery." — Hobble- 
obbl-gobble-gob-gob-gob. A steam of meats, a flare of candles, 
a rushing to and fro of waiters, a ceaseless clinking of glass 
and steel, a dizzy mist of gluttony, out of which I see my old 



IN LONDON. 413 

friend of the turtle-soup making terrific play among the pease, 
his knif3 darting down his throat. 

It is all over. We can eat no more. We are full of Bacchus 
and fat venison. We lay down our weapons and rest. " Why, 
in the name of goodness," sa3's I, turning round to Pillkington, 
who had behaved at dinner like a doctor ; " wh}' — ? " 

But a great rap, tap, tap proclaimed grace, after which the 
professional gentlemen sang out, ^' Non JVobis,'' and then the 
dessert and the speeches began ; about which we shall speak 
in the third course of our entertainment. 



III. 

On the hammer having ceased its tapping, Mr. Chisel, the 
immortal toast-master, who presided over the President, roared 
out to m}' three professional friends, " JV^on Nobis ;" and what 
is called " the business of the evening" commenced. 

First, the Warden of the Worshipful Society of the Bellows- 
Menders proposed " Her Majesty" in a reverential voice. We 
all stood up respectfully, Chisel 3'elling out to us to '' Charge 
our glasses." The royal health having been imbibed, the pro- 
fessional gentlemen ejaculated a part of the National Anthem ; 
and I do not mean any disrespect to them personall}^ in men- 
tioning that this eminently religious hymn was performed by 
Messrs. Shadrach and Meshech, two well-known melodists of 
the Hebrew persuasion. We clinked our glasses at the con- 
clusion of the anthem, making more dents upon the time-worn 
old board, where man}- a man present had clinked for George 
III., clapped for George IV., rapped for William IV., and was 
rejoiced to bump the bottom of his glass as a token of reverence 
for our present Sovereign. 

Here, as in the case of the Hebrew melophonists, I would 
insinuate no wrong thought. Gentlemen, no doubt, have the 
loyal emotions which exhibit themselves by clapping glasses on 
the tables. We do it at home. Let us make no doubt that 
the bellows-menders, tailors, authors, public characters, judges, 
aldermen, sheriffs, and what not, shout out a health for the 
Sovereign every night at their banquets, and that their families 
fill round and drink the same toast from the bottles of half- 
guinea Burgundy. 

"His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and Albert Prince of 
Wales, and the rest of the Royal Family," followed. Chisel 
yelling out the august titles, and all of us banging away with 



414 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

our glasses, as if we were seriousl}- interested in drinking 
healths to this royal race : as if drinking healths could do any- 
body any good ; as if the imprecations of a company of bellows- 
menders, aldermen, magistrates, tailors, authors, tradesmen, 
ambassadors, who did not care a twopenn3-piece for all the 
royal families in Europe, could somehow affect heaven kindly 
towards their Roj'al Highnesses b}^ their tips}^ vows, under the 
presidence of Mr. Chisel. 

The Queen Dowager's health was next praj'ed for by us 
Bacchanalians, I need not say with what fervenc}' and efficacy. 
This pra3'er was no sooner put up by the Chairman, with Chisel 
as his Boanerges of a Clerk, than the elderh' Hebrew gentle- 
men before mentioned began striking up a wild patriotic ditty 
about the " Queen of the Isles, on whose sea-girt shores the 
bright sun smiles, and the ocean roars ; whose cliffs never 
knew, since the bright sun rose, but a people true, who scorned 
all foes. O, a people true, who scorn all wiles, inhabit 3'ou, 
bright Queen of the Isles. Bright Quee — Bright Quee — ee 
— ee — ee — ee — en awf the Isles ! " or words to that effect, 
which Shadrach took up and warbled across his glass to 
Meshech, which Meshech trolled awa}^ to his brother singer, 
until the ditty was ended, nobod}^ understanding a word of 
what it meant ; not Oldbo^^ — not the old or }■ oung Israelite 
minstrel his companion — not we, who were clinking our glasses 
— not Chisel, who was urging us and the Chairman on — not 
the Chairman and the guests in embroidery — not the kind, ex- 
alted, and amiable lady whose health we were making believe 
to drink, certainh^, and in order to render whose name welcome 
to the Powers to whom we recommended her safet}', we offered 
up, through the mouths of three singers, hired for the purpose, 
a perfectly insane and irrelevant song. 

"Why," sa^^s I to Pillkington, "the Chairman and the 
grand guests might just as well get up and dance round the 
table, or cut off Chisel's head and pop it into a turtle-soup 
tureen, or go through any other mad ceremony as the last. 
Which of us here cares for her Majesty the Queen Dowager, 
any more than for a virtuous and eminent lady, whose goodness 
and private worth appear in all her acts ? What the deuce has 
that absurd song about the Queen of the Isles to do with her 
Majesty, and how does it set us all stamping with our glasses 
on the mahogany?" Chisel bellowed out another toast — 
"The Army;" and we were silent in admiration, while Sir 
George Bluff, the greatest General present, rose to return 
thanks. 



m LONDON. 415 

Our end of the table was far removed from the thick of the 
affair, and we only heard, as it were, the indistinct cannonading 
of the General, whose force had just advanced into action. We 
saw an old gentleman with white whiskers, and a flaring scarlet 
coat covered with stars and gilding, rise up with a frightened 
and desperate look, and declare that " this was the proudest — ■ 
a-hem — moment of his — a-hem — unworth}' as he was — 
a-hem — as a member of the British — a-hem — who had fought 
under the illustrious Duke of — a-hem — his joy was to come 
among the Bellows-Menders — a-hem — and inform the great 
merchants of the greatest Cit}^ of the — hum — that a British 

— a-hem — was alwaj's ready to do his — hum. Napoleon — 
Salamanca — a-hem — had witnessed their — hum, haw — and 
should any other — hum — ho — casion which he deepl}- depre- 
cated — haw — there were men now around him — a-haw — 
who, inspired by the Bellows-Menders' Company and the City 
of London — a-hum — would do their duty as — a-hum — a-haw 

— a-hah." Immense cheers, yells, hurrays, roars, glass-smack- 
ings, and applause followed this harangue, at the end of which 
the three Israelites, encouraged by Chisel, began a mihtar^^ 
cantata — "Oh, the sword and shield — on the battle-field — 
Are the joys that best we love, bo3^s — Where the Grenadiers, 
with their pikes and spears, through the ranks of the foemeu 
shove, boys — Where the bold hurray strikes dread dismay, 
in the ranks of the dead and d3'in' — and the baynet clanks m 
the Frenchmen's ranks, as the}^ fl}^ from the British Lion." (i 
repeat, as before, that I quote from memor}'.) 

Then the Secretary of the Tape and Sealing- Wax Oflice rose 
to return thanks for the blessings which we begged upon the 
Ministr3^ He was, he said, but a humble — the humblest mem- 
ber of that bod}^ The suffrages which that body had received 
from the nation were gratifying, but the most gratifjing testi- 
monial of all was the approval of the Bellows-Menders' Com- 
pany. (^Immense applause.) Yes, among the most enlightened 
of the mighty corporations of the Cit}', the most enlightened 
was the Bellows-Menders'. Yes, he might say, in consonance 
with their motto, and in defiance of illiberalit}", Afflavit Veritas 
et dissipati sunt. {Enormous applause.) Yes, the thanks and 
pride that were boiling with emotion in his bosom, trembled 
to find utterance at his lip. Yes, the proudest moment of his 
life, the crown of his ambition, the meed of his early hopes and 
struggles and aspirations, was at that moment won in the 
approbation of the Bellows-Menders. Yes, his children should 
know that he too had attended at those great, those noble, those 



416 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

J03011S, those ancient festivals, and that he too, the humble 
individual who from his heart pledged the assembled compan}- 
in a bumper — that he too was a Bellows-Mender. 

Shadrach, Meshech, and Oldboy, at this began singing, I 
don't know for what reason, a rustic madrigal, describing, 
"Oh, the J03'S of bonny May — bonny May — a-a-ay, when the 
birds sing on the spray," &c., which never, as I could see, had 
the least relation to that or an}^ other Ministry, but which was, 
nevertheless, applauded by all present. And then the Judges 
returned thanks ; and the Clergy returned thanks ; and the 
Foreign Ministers had an innings (all interspersed by my 
friends' indefatigable melodies) ; and the distinguished foreign- 
ers present, especially Mr. Washington Jackson, were greeted, 
and that distinguished American rose amidst thunders of ap- 
plause. 

He explained how Broadway and Cornhill were in fact the 
same. He showed how Washington was in fact an Englishman, 
and how Franklin would never have been an American but for 
his education as a printer in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He declared 
that Milton was his cousin, Locke his ancestor, Newton his 
dearest friend, Shakspeare his grandfather, or more or less — 
he vowed that he had wept tears of briny anguish on the pedes- 
tal of Charing Cross — kissed with honest fervor the clay of 
Runnj'mede — that Ben Jonson and Samuel — that Pope and 
Dryden, and Dr. Watts and Swift were the darlings of his 
hearth and home, as of ours, and in a speech of about five-and- 
thirty minutes, explained to us a series of complimentarj' sen- 
sations very hard to repeat or to remember. 

But I observed that, during his oration, the gentlemen who 
report for the dailj' papers w^ere occupied wdth their wine in- 
stead of their note-books — that the three singers of Israel 
yawned and showed man}- signs of disquiet and inebriety, and 
that my old friend, who had swallowed the three plates of 
turtle, was sound asleep. 

Pillkington and I quitted the banqueting-hall, and w^ent 
into the tea-room, where gents were assembled still, drinking 
slops and eating buttered muffins, until the grease trickled 
down their faces. Then I resumed the query which I was just 
about to put, when grace was called, and the last chapter ended. 
*' And, gracious goodness! " I said, "what can be the mean- 
ing of a ceremony so costly, so uncomfortable, so savory, so 
unwholesome as this ? Who is called upon to pay two or three 
guineas for my dinner now, in this blessed year 1847 ? Who 
is it that can want muffins after such a banquet? Are there no 



m LONDO]^. 41 



^* 



poor? Is there no reason? Is this monstrous belly- worship 
to exist for ever ? " 

"Spec," the Doctor said, " j'ou had best come away. I 
make no doubt that you for one have had too much." And we 
went to his brougham. May nobody have such a headache on 
this happy New Year as befell the present writer on the morn- 
ing after the Dinner in the City ! 



WAITING AT THE STATION. 

We are amongst a number of people waiting for the Black- 
wall train at the Fenchurch Street Station. Some of us are 
going a little farther than Blackwall — as far as Gravesend ; 
some of us are going even farther than Gravesend — to Port 
Phillip, in Australia, leaving behind the patrice fines and the 
pleasant iields of Old England. It is rather a queer sensation 
to be in the same boat and station with a party that is going 
upon so prodigious a journey. One speculates about them with 
more than an ordinary interest, thinking of the difference 
between 3'our fate and theirs, and that we shall never behold 
these faces again. 

Some eight-and-thirt}^ women are sitting in the large Hall of 
the station, with bundles, baskets, and light baggage, waiting 
for the steamer, and the orders to embark. A few friends are 
taking leave of them, bonnets are laid together, and whispering 
going on. A little crying is taking place ; — onl}' a very little 
crying, — and among those who remain, as it seems to me, not 
those who are going awa3\ The}^ leave behind them little to 
weep for ; they are going from bitter cold and hunger, constant 
want and unavailing labor. Why should they be sorry to quit 
a mother who has been so hard to them as our countr}^ has 
been ? How man}^ of these women will ever see the shore again, 
upon the brink of which they stand, and from which they will 
depart in a few minutes more ? It makes one sad and ashamed 
too, that they should not be more sorry. But how are you to 
expect love where j^ou have given such scanty kindness? If 
you saw your children glad at the thoughts of leaving 3^ou, and 
for ever : would you blame 3'ourselves or them ? It is not that 
the children are ungrateful, but the home was unhappj^ and the 
parents indifferent or unkind. You are in the wrong, under 

27 



418 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

whose government the}^ onty had neglect and wretchedness ; 
not the^', who can't be called upon to love such an unlovel}^ 
thing as miser}^, or to make an}' other return for neglect but 
indifference and aversion. 

You and I, let us suppose again, are civilized persons. We 
have been decently educated : and live decentl}^ ever^' da}', and 
wear tolerable clothes, and practise cleanliness : and love the 
arts and graces of life. As we walk down this rank of eight- 
and-thirt}^ female emigrants, let us fancy that we are at Mel- 
bourne, and not in London, and that we have come down from 
our sheep-walks, or clearings, having heard of the arrival of 
forty honest, well-recommended 3'oung women, and having a 
natural longing to take a wife home to the Bush — which of 
these would 3'ou like? If 3'ou were an Australian Sultan, to 
which of these would 3'ou throw the handkerchief ? I am afraid 
not one of them. I fear, in our present mood of mind, we 
should mount horse and return to the countr3^, preferring a 
solitude, and to be a bachelor, than to put up with one of these 
for a companion. There is no girl here to tempt you b3' her 
looks : (and, world- wiseacre as 3'Ou are, it is by these 3'ou are 
principally moved) — there is no prett}', modest, red-cheeked 
rustic, — no neat, trim little grisette, such as what we call a 
gentleman might cast his e3^es upon without too much derogat- 
ing, and might find favor in the e3'es of a man about town. 
No ; it is a homely bev3' of women with scarcel3' an3' beauty 
amongst them — their clothes are decent, but not the least 
picturesque — their faces are pale and care-worn for the most 
part — how, indeed, should it be otherwise, seeing that the}" 
have known care and want all their days ? — there the3" sit, 
upon bare benches, with dingy bundles, and great cotton um- 
brellas — and the truth is, 3'OU are not a hard3' colonist, a 
feeder of sheep, feller of trees, a hunter of kangaroos — but a 
London man, and my lord the Sultan's cambric handkerchief 
is scented with Bond Street perfumer3' — you put it in your 
pocket, and couldn't give it to an3^ one of these women. 

The}'^ are not like 3'ou, indeed. The3^ have not 3'our tastes 
and feelings : your education and refinements. The3" would 
not understand a hundred things which seem perfectl3" simple 
to 3'OU. They would shock 3'ou a hundred times a da3' b3^ as 
many deficiencies of politeness, or b3' outrages upon the Queen's 
English — by practices entirel3^ harmless, and yet in your eyes 
actuallv worse than crimes — thev have large hard hands and 
clumsy feet. The woman 3-ou love must have prett3^ soft fingers 
that you may hold in yours : must speak her language properly, 



IN LOT^DO^. 419 

and at least when you offer her j^our heart, must return hers with 
its h in the right place, as she whispers that it is 3'ours, or you 
will have none of it. If she sa3^s, " O Heclward, I ham so un- 
app3^ to think I shall never beold 3'ou agin," — though her emo- 
tion on leaving you might be perfectl3^ tender and genuine, you 
would be obliged to laugh. If she said, " Hedward, m3^ art is 
3''0urs for hever and hever " (and an3'bod3" heard her), she might 
as well stab 3^ou, — 3'ou couldn't accept the most faithful affec- 
tion offered in such terms — 3^ou are a town-bred man, I sa\', 
and 3'our handkerchief smells of Bond Street musk and mille- 
fleur. A sunburnt settler out of the Bush won't feel an3' of 
these exquisite tortures : or understand this kind of laughter : ^ 
or object to Molly because her hands are coarse and her ankles 
thick : but he will take her back to his farm, where she will 
nurse his children, bake his dough, milk his cows, and cook his 
kangaroo for him. 

But between 3^ou, an educated Londoner, and that woman, 
is not the union absurd and impossible ? Would it not be un- 
bearable for either? Solitude would be incomparal^ty pleasanter 
than such a companion. — You might take her with a handsome 
fortune, perhaps, were 3"0u starving ; but then it is because 3^ou 
want a house and carriage, let us sa3' (^your necessaries of life), 
and must have them even if 3"ou purchase them with 3'our precious 
person. You do as much, or 3'our sister does as much, every 
day. That, however, is not the point : I am not talking about 
the meanness to which your worship may be possibly obliged to 
stoop, in order, as you say, " to keep up your rank in society " 

— only stating that this immense social difference does exist. 
You don't like to own it : or don't choose to talk about it, and 
such things had much better not be spoken about at all. I hear 
your worship say, there must be differences in rank and so forth ! 
Well ! out with it at once : you don't think Molly is 3'Our equal 

— nor indeed is she in the possession of many artificial acquire- 
ments. She can't make Latin verses, for example, as you used 
to do at school ; she can't speak French and Itahan, as your 
wife very likely can, &c. — and in so far she is your inferior, 
and your amiable lady's. 

But what I note, what I marvel at, what I acknowledge, 
what I am ashamed of, what is contrar3' to Christian morals, 
manly modesty and honesty, and to the national well-being, is 
that there should be that immense social distinction between the 
well-dressed classes (as, if you will permit me, we will call our- 
selves,) and our brethren and sisters in the fustian jackets and 
pattens. If 3^ou deny it for your part, I say that ^'ou are mis- 



420 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

taken, and deceive 3^ourself wofully. I sa}- that 3'ou have been 
educated to it through Gothic ages, and have had it handed 
down to 3'Ou from your fathers (not that the^' were anybod}^ in 
l^articular, but respectable, well-dressed progenitors, let us 
sa}' for a generation or two) — from 3'our well-dressed fathers 
before you. How^ long ago is it, that our preachers were teach- 
ing the poor '• to know their station?" that it was the peculiar 
boast of EngUshmen, that an3' man, the humblest among us, 
could, b3^ talent, industr3', and good luck, hope to take his 
place in the aristocracy of his country, and that we pointed 
with pride to Lord This, who w^as the grandson of a barber ; 
and to Earl That, whose father was an apothecary? What a 
multitude of most respectable folks pyide themselves on these 
things still ! The gulf is not impassable, because one man in a 
million swims over it, and we hail him for his strength and suc- 
cess. He has landed on the happ3' island. He is one of the 
aristocrac3\ Let us clap hands and applaud. There's no 
countr3^ like ours for rational freedom. 

If you go up and speak to one of these women, as 3'ou do, 
(and very good-naturedl3% and you can't help that confounded 
condescension,) she curtsies and holds down her head meekl3', 
and repUes with modesty, as becomes her station, to your 
honor with the clean shirt and the well-made coat. ' ' And so 
she should," what hundreds of thousands of us rich and poor say 
still. Both believe this to be bounden dut3' ; and that a poor 
person should naturall3' bob her head to a rich one ph3'sically 
and morally. 

Let us get her last curts3^ from her as she stands here upon 
the English shore. When she gets into the Australian w^oods 
her back won't bend except to her labor ; or, if it do, from old 
habit and the reminiscence of the old countr3-, do 3'ou suppose 
her children will be like that timid creature before 3'OU ? They 
will know nothing of that Gothic society, with its ranks and 
hierarchies, its cumbrous ceremonies, its glittering antique 
paraphernalia, in which we have been educated ; in which rich 
and poor still acquiesce, and which multitudes of both still 
admire : far removed from these old-world traditions, they will 
be bred up in the midst of plenty, freedom, manly brother- 
hood. Do you think if your worship's grandson goes into the 
Australian woods, or meets the grandchild of one of 3^onder 
women by the banks of the Warrawarra, the Australian will 
take a hat off or bob a curtsy to the new comer? He will hold 
out his hand, and say, "Stranger, come into my house and 
take a shakedown and have a share of our supper. You come 



IN LONDON. 421 

out of the old country, do }■ ou ? There was some people were 
kind to nay grandmother there, and sent her out to Melbourne. 
Times are changed since then — come in and welcome ! " 

What a confession it is that we have almost all of us been 
obliged to make ! A clever and earnest-minded writer gets a 
commission from the Morning Chronicle newspaper, and reports 
upon the state of our poor in London ; he goes amongst labor- 
ing people and poor of all kinds — and brings back what? A 
picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and 
pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances 
own they never read anything like to it ; and that the griefs, 
struggles, strange adventures here depicted, exceed anything 
that any of us could imagine. Yes ; and these wonders and 
terrors have been l3'ing hy your door and mine ever since we 
had a door of our own. We had but to go a hundred yards off 
and see for ourselves, but we never did. Don't we pay poor- 
rates, and are the}^ not heavy enough in the name of patience? 
Very true ; and we have our own private pensioners, and give 
away some of our superfluitj-, very likely. You are not unkind ; 
not ungenerous. But of such wondrous and complicated misery 
as this you confess you had no idea. No. How should you? 
— j^ou and I — we are of the upper classes ; we have had 
hitherto no community with the poor. We never speak a word 
to the servant who waits on us for twenty years ; we conde- 
scend to employ a tradesman, keeping him at a proper distance, 
mind, of course, at a proper distance — we laugh at his young 
men, if the}^ dance, jig, and amuse themselves like their betters, 
and call them counter-jumpers, snobs, and what not? of his 
workmen we know nothing, how pitilessly they are ground 
down, how they live and die, here close by us at the backs of 
our houses ; until some poet like Hood wakes and sings that 
dreadful " Song of the Shirt;'' some prophet like Carlyle rises 
up and denounces woe ; some clear-sighted, energetic man like 
the writer of the Chronicle travels into the poor man's country 
for us, and comes back with his tale of terror and wonder. 

Awful, awful poor man's country! The bell rings, and 
these eight-and-thirty women bid adieu to it, rescued from it (as 
a few thousands more will be) by some kind people who are inter- 
ested in their behalf. In two hours more, the steamer lies along- 
side the ship Culloden, which will bear them to their new home. 
Here are the berths aft for the unmarried women, the married 
couples are in the midships, the bachelors in the fore-part of the 
ship. Above and below decks it swarms and echoes with the 
bustle of departure. The Emigration Commissioner comes and 



422 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

calls over their names ; there are old and young, large families, 
numbers of children alread}'^ accustomed to the ship, and look- 
ino- about with amused unconsciousness. One was born but 
just now on board ; he will not know how to speak English till 
he is fifteen thousand miles awa^- from home. Some of these 
kind people whose bounty and benevolence organized the 
Female Emigration Scheme, are here to give a last word and 
shake of the hand to their protegees. They hang sadly and 
gratefully round their patrons. One of them, a clergyman, 
who has devoted himself to this good work, says a few words 
to them at parting. It is a solemn minute indeed — for those 
who (with the few thousand who will follow them) are leaving 
the country and escaping from the question between rich and 
poor ; and what for those who remain ? But, at least, those 
who go will remember that in their miser}^ here the}'^ found 
gentle hearts to love and pit}^ them, and generous hands to 
give them succor, and will plant in the new countr}^ this grate- 
ful tradition of the old. — May heaven's good mercy speed 
them ! 




A NIGHT'S PLEASURE. 

I. 

Having made a solemn engagement during the last Mid- 
summer holida3'S with m}' 3'oung friend Augustus Jones, that 
we should go to a Christmas Pantomime together, and being 
' accommodated by the obliging proprietors of Covent Garden 
Theatre with a private box for last Tuesda}', I invited not only 
him, but some other ^^oiuig friends to be present at the enter- 
tainment. The two Miss Twiggs, the charming daughters of 
the Rev. Mr. Twigg, our neighbor ; Miss Minny Twigg, their 
youngest sister, eight 3'ears of age ; and their maternal aunt, 
Mrs. Captain Flather, as the chaperon of the young ladies, 
were the four other partakers of this amusement with mj'self 
and Mr. Jones. 

It was agreed that the ladies, who live in Montpellier 
Square, Brompton, should take up m3'self and Master Augus- 
tus at the " Sarcophagus Club," which is on the wa}^ to the 
theatre, and where we two gentlemen dined on the da}- ap- 
pointed. Cox's most roomy fl}^, the mouldy green one, in 
which he insists on putting the roaring gray horse, was engaged 



m LOI^DOI^. 423 

for the happy evening. Onl}' an intoxicated driver (as Cox's 
man always is) could ever, I am sure, get that animal into a 
trot. But the utmost fury of the whip will not drive him into 
a dangerous pace ; and besides, the ladies were protected by 
Thomas, Mrs. Flather's page, a young man with a gold band 
to his hat, and a large gilt knob on the top, who ensured the 
safety of the cargo, and reall}^ gave the vehicle the dignit}^ of 
one's own carriage. 

The dinner-hour at the " Sarcophagus " being appointed for 
five o'clock, and a table secured in the strangers' room. Master 
Jones was good enough to arrive (under the guardianship of 
the Colonel's footman) about half an hour before the appointed 
time, and the interval was by him partly passed in conversa- 
tion, but chiefl}' in looking at a large silver watch which he 
possesses, and in hoping that we shouldn't be late. 

I made every attempt to pacify and amuse m}^ young guest, 
whose anxiety was not about the dinner but about the play. 
I tried him with a few questions about Greek and Mathematics 
— a sort of talk, however, which I was obliged speedily to 
abandon, for I found he knew a great deal more upon these 
subjects than I did— (it is disgusting how preternaturally 
learned the bo3's of our day are, by the way). I engaged him 
to relate anecdotes about his schoolfellows and ushers, which 
he did, but still in a hurried, agitated, nervous manner — evi- 
dently thinking about that sole absorbing subject, the panto- 
mime. 

A neat little dinner, served in Botibol's best manner (our 
chef at the " Sarcophagus " knows when he has to deal with a 
connoisseur, and would as soon serve me up his own ears as a 
rechauffe dish), made scarcel}^ any impression on 3^oung Jones. 
After a couple of spoonfuls, he pushed away the Palestine soup, 
and took out his large silver watch — he applied two or three 
times to the chronometer during the fish period — and it was 
not until I had him employed upon an omelette, full of apricot 
jam, that the young gentleman was decently tranquil. 

With the last mouthful of the omelette he began to fidget 
again ; and it still wanted a quarter of an hour of six. Nuts, 
almonds and raisins, figs (the almost never-failing soother of 
3^outh), I hoped might keep him quiet, and laid before him all 
those delicacies. But he beat the devil's tattoo with the nut- 
crackers, had out the watch time after time, declared that it 
stopped, and made such a ceaseless kicking on the legs of his 
chair, that there were moments w^hen I wished he was back in 
the parlor of Mrs. Jones, his mamma. 



424 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

I know oldsters who have a savage pleasure in making boys 
drunk — a horrid thought of this kind may, perhaps, have 
crossed my mind. " If I could get him to drink half a dozen 
glasses of that heavy port, it migiit soothe him and make him 
sleep," I may have thought. But he would onl}^ take a couple 
of glasses of wine. He said he didn't like more ; that his father 
did not wish him to take more : and abashed by his frank and 
honest demeanor, I would not press him, of course, a single 
moment further, and so was forced to take the bottle to myself, 
to soothe me instead of nw 3'oung guest. 

He was almost frantic at a quarter to seven, by which time 
the ladies had agreed to call for us, and for about five minutes 
was perfectly dangerous. " We shall be late, I know we shall ; 
I said we should ! I am sure it's seven, past, and that the box 
will be taken ! " and countless other exclamations of fear and 
impatience passed through his mind. At length we heard a 
carriage stop, and a Club servant entering and directing him- 
self towards our table. Young Jon^s did not want to hear him 
speak, but cried out, — " Hoora}^, here they are!" flung his 
napkin over his head, dashed off his qjiair, sprang at his hat 
like a kitten at a ball, and bounced out of the door, crying out, 
*' Come along, Mr. Spec!" whilst the individual addressed 
much more deliberately followed. "Happy Augustus!" I 
mentally exclaimed. " O thou brisk and bounding votary of 
pleasure ! When the virile toga has taken the place of the 
jacket and turned-down collar, that Columbine^ who will float 
before 3'ou a goddess to-night, will only be a third-rate dancing- 
female, with rouge and large feet. You will see the ropes by 
which the genii come down, and the dirty crumpled knees of 
the fairies — and you won't be in such a hurry to leave a good 
bottle of port as now at the pleasant age of thirteen." — [By 
the wa}^ boys are made so abominabl}' comfortable and odiously 
happy, now-a-days, that when I look back to 1802, and ray 
own youth, I get in a rage with the whole race of boys, and feel 
inclined to flog them all round.] Paj'ing the bill, I say, and 
making these leisurely observations, I passed under the hall of 
the " Sarcophagus," where Thomas, the page, touched the gold- 
knobbed hat respectfully to me, in a manner which I think must 
have rather surprised old General Growler, who was unrolling 
himself of his muffetees and wrappers, and issued into the 
street, where Cox's fly was in waiting : the windows up, and 
whitened with a slight frost : the silhouettes of the dear beings 
within dimly visible against the chemist's light opposite the 



IN LONDON. 425 

* 

Club ; and Master Augustus already kicking his heels on the 
box, b}' the side of the inebriated driver. 

I caused the youth to descend from that perch, and the door 
of the fl}' being opened, thrust him in. Mrs. Captain Flather, 
of course, occupied the place of honor — an uncommonly capa- 
cious woman, — and one of the ^'oung ladies made a retreat 
from the front seat, in order to leave it vacant for m3'self ; but 
I insisted on not incommoding Mrs. Captain F., and that the 
two darling children should sit beside her, while I occupied 
the place of back bodkin between the two Miss Twiggs. 

They were attired in white, covered up with shawls, with 
bouquets in their laps, and their hair dressed evidently for the 
occasion : Mrs. Flather in her red velvet of course, with her large 
gilt state turban. 

She saw that we were squeezed on our side of the carriage, 
and made an offer to receive me on hers. 

Squeezed? I should think we were; but, O Emil}^, O 
Louisa, 3'ou mischievous little black-ej^ed creatures, who would 
dislike being squeezed b}^ you ? I wished it was to York we 
were going, and not to Covent Garden. How swifth^ the 
moments passed. We were at the pla3^-house in no tiriie : and 
Augustus plunged instantl}' out of the fly over the shins of 
everybod}'. 

II. 

We took possession of the private box assigned to us : and 
Mrs. Flather seated herself in the place of honor — each of the 
young ladies taking it by turns to occupj' the other corner. 
Miss Minn}' and Master Jones occupied the middle places ; and 
it was pleasant to watch the 3'oung gentleman throughout the 
performance of the comed}^ — during which he was never quiet 
for two minutes — now shifting his chair, now swinging to and 
fro upon it, now digging his elbows into the capacious sides of 
Mrs. Captain Flather, now beating with his boots against the 
front of the box, or trampling upon the skirts of Mrs. Flather's 
satin garment. 

He occupied himself unceasingly, too, in working up and 
down Mrs. F.'s double-barrelled French opera-glass — not a 
little to the detriment of that instrument and the wrath of tlie 
owner ; indeed I have no doubt, that had not Mrs. Flather 
reflected that Mrs. Colonel Jones gave some of the most elegant 
parties in London, to which she was ver}' anxious to be invited, 
she would have boxed Master Augustus's ears in the presence 
of the whole audience of Covent Garden. 



426 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

One of the 3'Oung ladies was, of course, obliged to remain in 
the back row with Mr. Spec. We could not see much of the 
play over Mrs. F.'s turban ; but I trust that we were not un- 
happ3' in our retired position. O Miss Emil3^ ! O Miss Louisa ! 
there is one who would be happj' to sit for a week close bj^ 
either of 3'ou, though it were on one of those abominable little, 
private-box chairs. I know, for mj" part, that everj^ time the 
box-keeperess popped in her head, and asked if we would take 
any refreshment, I thought the interruption odious. 

Our 3^oung ladies, and their stout chaperon and aunt, had 
come provided with neat little bouquets of flowers, in which they 
evidentl}' took a considerable pride, and which were laid, on 
their first entrance, on the ledge in front of our box. 

But, present!}', on the opposite side of the house, Mrs. Cut- 
bush, of Pocklington Gardens, appeared with her daughters, 
and bowed in a patronizing manner to the ladies of our party, 
with whom the Cutbush family had a slight acquaintance. 

Before ten minutes, the bouquets of our part}^ were whisked 
away from the ledge of the box. Mrs. Flather dropped hers 
to the ground, where Master Jones's feet speedily' finished it ; 
Miss Louisa Twigg let hers fall into her lap, and covered it 
with her pocket-handkerchief. Uneasy signals passed between 
her and her sister. I could not, at first, understand what event 
had occurred to make these ladies so unhappj'. 

At last the secret came out. The Misses Cutbush had 
bouquets like little haystacks before them. Our small nose- 
ga3'S, which had quite satisfied the girls until now, had become 
odious in their little jealous e^-es ; and the Cutbushes triumphed 
over them. 

I have joked the ladies subsequently on this adventure ; but 
not one of them will acknowledge the charge against them. It 
was mere accident that made them drop the flowers — pure 
accident. They jealous of the Cutbushes — not thej- , indeed ; 
and of course, each person on this head is welcome to his own 
opinion. 

How different, meanwhile, was the behavior of my young 
friend Master Jones, who is not as yet sophisticated by the 
world. He not only nodded to his father's servant, who had 
taken a place in the pit, and was to escort his young master 
home, but he discovered a schoolfellow in the pit hkewise. 
"By Jove, there's Smith!" he cried out, as if the sight of 
Smith was the most extraordinary event in the world. He 
pointed out Smith to all of us. He never ceased nodding, wink- 
ing, grinning, telegraphing, until he had succeeded in attracting 



m LONDON. 427 

the attention not only of Master Smith, but of the greater part 
of the house ; and whenever anything in tlie pla}- struck him as 
worthy of applause, he instantl}^ made signals to Smith below, 
and shook his fist at him, as much as to sa}', "By Jove, old 
fellow, ain't it good? I sa}', Smith, isn't it prime^ old boy?" 
He actuall}' made remarks on his fingers to Master Smith daring 
the performance. 

I confess he was one of the best parts of the night's enter- 
tainment to me. How Jones and Smith will talk about that 
pla}^ when they meet after holida3^s ! And not only then will 
the}' remember it, but all their lives long. Whj^ do 3'ou re- 
member that pla}^ 3'ou saw thirt}' 3'ears ago, and forget the one 
over w^hich 3^ou 3'awned last week? " Ah, m3^ brave little bo3'," 
I thought in my heart, ' ' twent3^ years hence you will recollect 
this, and have forgotten man3^ a better thing. You wdll have 
been in love twice or thrice % that time, and have forgotten 
it ; 3'ou will have buried vour wife and forgotten her ; 30U will 
have had ever so man}^ friendships and forgotten them. You 
and Smith won't care for each other, ver3^ probabl3' ; but 3'ou'll 
remember all the actors and the plot of this piece we are 
seeing." 

I protest I have forgotten it myself. In our back row we 
could not see or hear much of the performance (and no great 
loss) — fitful bursts of elocution only occasionally reaching us, in 
which we could recognize the well-known nasal twang of the ex- 
cellent Mr. Stupor, who performed the part of the young hero ; 
or the ringing laughter of Mrs, Belmore, who had to giggle 
through the whole piece. 

It was one of Mr. Bo3^ster's comedies of English Life. Frank 
Nightrake (Stupor) and his friend Bob Fitzofl[le3^ appeared in 
the first scene, having a conversation with that impossible valet 
of English Comed3', whom an3' gentleman w^ould turn out of 
doors before he could get through half a length of the dialogue 
assigned. I caught onl3'^ a glimpse of this act. Bob, like a 
fashionable 3'oung dog of the aristocrac3' (the character was 
pla3^ed b3' Bulger, a meritorious man, but ver3' stout, and nearl3' 
fift3" 3"ears of age), was dressed in a rhubarb- colored bod3'-coat 
with brass buttons, a couple of under- waistcoats, a blue satin 
stock with a paste brooch in it, and an eighteenpenn3' cane, 
which he never let out of his hand, and with which he poked 
fun at ever3'bod3^ Frank Nightrake, on the contrar3'', being at 
home, was attired in a very close-fitting chintz dressing-gown, 
lined with glazed red calico, and was seated before a large pew- 
ter teapot, at breakfast. And, as 3^our true English Comedy 



428 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

is the representation of nature, I could not but think how like 
these figures on the stage, and the dialogue which they used, 
were to the appearance and talk of English gentlemen of the 
present day. 

The dialogue went on somewhat in the following fashion : — 

Bob Fitzoffley {enters whistling). — " The top of the morning 
to thee, Frank! What! at breakfast already? At chocolate 
and the Morning Post, like a dowager of sixt}'? Slang! {he 
pokes the servant with his cane) what has come to th}' master, 
thou Prince of Valets ! thou pattern of Slavej's ! thou swiftest 
of Mercuries ! Has the Honorable Francis Nightrake lost his 
heart, or his head, or his health? " 

Frank {laying down the paper^. — " Bob, Bob, I have lost all 
three ! I have lost m}- health, Bob, with thee and thy like, over 
the Burgund}' at the club ; I have lost my head. Bob, with think- 
ing how I shall pay my debts ; and I have lost my heart, Bob, 
oh, to such a creature ! " 

Bob. — "A Venus, of course ? " 

Slang. — " With the presence of Juno." 

Bob. — " And the modest}- of Minerva." 

Frank. — " And the coldness of Diana." 

Bob. — " Pish ! What a sigh is that about a woman ! Thou 
shalt be Endymion, the nightrake of old : and conquer this shy 
goddess. Hey, Slang?" 

Herewith Slang takes the lead of the conversation, and pro- 
pounds a plot for running awa^' with the heiress ; and I could 
not help remarking how like the comed}" was to life — how the 
gentlemen alwa3-s say "thou " and " pr3'thee," and "go to," 
and talk about heathen goddesses to each other ; how their 
servants are always their particular intimates ; how when there 
is serious love-making between a gentleman and lad}', a comic 
attachment invariably springs up between the valet and waiting- 
maid of each ; how Lady Grace Gadabout, when she calls upon 
Rose Ringdove to pay a morning visit, appears in a low satin 
dress, with jewels in her hair ; how Saucebox, her attendant, 
wears diamond brooches, and rings on all her fingers : while 
Mrs. Tallyho, on the other hand, transacts all the business of 
life in a riding-habit, and always points her jokes by a cut of 
the whip. 

This playfulness produced a roar all over the house, when- 
ever it was repeated, and always made our little friends clap 
their hands and shout in chorus. 

Like that bon-vivant who envied the beggars staring into the 



m LONDON. 429 

cook-shop windows, and wished he could be hungry, I envied 
the boys, and wished I could laugh, very much. In the last 
act, I remember — for it is now very nearly a week ago — every- 
bod}^ took refuge either in a secret door, or behind a screen 
or curtain, or under a table, or up a chimney : and the house 
roared as each person came out from his place of concealment. 
And the old fellow in top-boots, joining the hands of the young 
couple (Fitzoffley, of course, pairing off w4th the widow) , gave 
them his blessing, and thirty thousand pounds. 

And ah, ye gods ! if I wished before that comedies were like 
life, how I wished that life was like comedies ! Whereon the 
drop fell ; and Augustus, clapping to the opera-glass, jumped 
up, crying — " Hurray ! now for the Pantomime." 



III. 

The composer of the Overture of the New Grand Comic 
Christmas Pantomime, Harlequin and the Fairy of the Spangled 
Pocket-handkerchief, or the Prince of the Enchanted Nose, arrayed 
in a bran-new Christmas suit, with his wristbands and collar 
turned elegantly over his cuffs and embroidered satin tie, takes 
a place at his desk, waves his stick, and away the Pantomime 
Overture begins. 

I pity a man who can't appreciate a Pantomime Overture. 
Children do not like it : the}^ sa}^ " Hang it, I wish the Panto- 
mime would begin : " but for us it is always a pleasant moment 
of reflection and enjoyment. It is not difficult music to under- 
stand, like that of 3'our Mendelssohns and Beethovens, whose 
S3'mphonies and sonatas Mrs. Spec states must be heard a score 
of times before j^ou can comprehend them. But of the proper 
Pantomime-music I am a delighted connoisseur. Perhaps it is 
because 3'ou meet so many old friends in these compositions 
consorting together in the queerest manner, and occasioning 
numberless pleasant surprises. Hark! there goes " 0/rf Dan 
Tucker " wandering into the ' ' Groves of Blarney ; " our friends 
the •• ' Scots ivha hae wi' Wallace hied " march rapidly down 
" Wapping Old Stairs" from which the " Figlia del Reggimento" 
comes bounding briskly, when she is met, embraced, and carried 
off by " Billy Taylor,'^ that brisk 3'oung fellow. 

All this while you are thinking with a faint, sickly kind of 
hope, that perhaps the Pantomime may be a good one ; some- 
thing like Harlequin and the Golden Orange-Tree, .which you 
recollect in your 3'outh ; something like Fortunio, that marvel- 
lous and delightful piece of buffoonery, which realized the most 



430 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

gorgeous visions of the absurd. You ma}^ be happ}', perchance : 
a glimpse of the old da3S ma}' come back to 3'oa. Lives there 
the man with soul so dead, the being ever so blase\and travel- 
worn, who does not feel some shock and thrill still : just at that 
moment when the bell (the dear and familiar bell of your 3'outh) 
begins to tingle, and the curtain to rise, and the large shoes 
and ankles, the flesh-colored leggings, the crumpled knees, the 
gorgeous robes and masks finall}^, of the actors mnged on the 
stage to shout the opening chorus ? 

All round the house you hear a great gasping a-ha-a from a 
thousand children's throats. Enjoyment is going to give i)lace 
to Hope. Desire is about to be realized. O 3'ou blind little 
brats ! Clap 3'our hands, and crane over the boxes, and open 
3'our e3'es with happ3^ wonder ! Clap 3'our hands now. In three 
weeks more the Reverend Doctor Swishtail expects the return 
of his 3'oung friends to Sugarcane House. 

• 9 » • • • • • • 

King Beak. Emperor of the Romans, having invited all the 
neighboring Princes, Fairies, and Enchanters to the feast at 
which he celebrated the marriage of his only son. Prince Aqui- 
line^ unluckih' gave the liver- wing of the fowl which he was 
carving to the Prince's godmother, the Fairy Bandanna^ while 
he put the gizzard-pinion on the plate of the Enchanter Gorgihus^ 
King of the Maraschino Mountains, and father of the Princess 
Rosolia^ to whom the Prince was affianced. 

The outraged Gor gibus rose from the table in a ftny, smashed 
his plate of chicken over the head of King Beak's Chamberlain, 
and wished that Prince Aquiline' s nose might grow on the instant 
as long as the sausage before him. 

It did so ; the screaming Princess rushed away from her 
bridegroom, and her father, breaking off the match with the 
House of Beak^ ordered his daughter to be carried in his sedan 
by the two giant-porters, Gor and Gogstay^ to his castle in the 
Juniper Forest, b3' the side of the bitter waters of the Absin- 
thine Lake, whither, after upsetting the jnarriage-tables, and 
flooring King Beak in a single combat, he himself repaired. 

The latter monarch could not bear to see or even to hear his 
disfigured son. 

When the Prince Aquiline blew his unfortunate and mon- 
strous nose, the windows of his father's palace broke ; the locks 
of the doors started ; the dishes and glasses of the King's ban- 
quet jingled and smashed as the3^ do on board a steamboat in 
a storm ; the liquor turned sour ; the Chancellor's wig started 
off his head, and the Prince's royal father, disgusted with his 



IN LONDON. 431 

son's appearance, drove him forth from his palace, and ban- 
ished him the kingdom. 

Life was a burden to him on account of that nose. He fled 
from a world in which he was ashamed to show it, and would 
have preferred a perfect solitude, but that he was obliged to 
engage one faithful attendant to give him snuff (his only conso- 
lation) and to keep his odious nose in order. 

But as he was wandering in a lonely forest, entangling his 
miserable trunk in the thickets, and causing the birds to fl}' 
scared from the branches, and the lions, stags, and foxes to 
sneak away in terror as the3' heard the tremendous booming 
. which issued from the fated Prince whenever he had occasion 
to use his pocket-handkerchief, the Fairj' of the Bandanna 
Islands took pitj^ on him, and, descending in her car drawn by 
doves, gave him a 'kerchief which rendered him invisible when- 
ever he placed it over his monstrous proboscis. 

Having occasion to blow his nose (which he was obliged to 
do pretty frequentl}', for he had taken cold while lying out 
among the rocks and morasses in the rain}^ miserable nights, so 
that the peasants, when tlie}^ heard him snoring fitfully, thought 
that storms were abroad,) at the gates of a castle by which he 
was passing, the door burst open, and the Irish Giant (after- 
wards Clown, indeed,) came out, and wondering looked about, 
furious to see no one. 

The Prince entered into the castle, and whom should he 
find there but the Princess Rosolia^ still plunged in despair. 
Her father snubbed her perpetually. " I wish he would snub 
me ! " exclaimed the Prince, pointing to his own monstrous 
deformity. In spite of his misfortune, she still remembered 
her Prince. " Even with his nose," the faithful Princess cried, 
" I love him more than all the world beside ! " 

At this declaration of unalterable fideUty, the Prince flung 
away his handkerchief, and knelt in rapture at the Princess's 
feet. She was a little scared at first by the hideousness of the 
distorted being before her — but what will not woman's faith 
overcome ? Hiding her head on his shoulder (and so losing 
sight of his misfortune), she vowed to love him still (in those * 
broken verses w^hieh only Princesses in Pantomimes dehver). 

At this instant King Gor gibus, the Giants, the King's House- 
hold, with clubs and battle-axes, rushed in. Drawing his im- 
mense scimitar, and seizing the Prince by his too-prominent 
feature, he was just on the point of sacrificing him, when, -- 
when, I need not say, the Fairy Bandanna (Miss Bendigo), in 
her amaranthine car drawn by Paphian doves, appeared and put 



432 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

a stop to the massacre. King Gorgibus became Pantaloon, the 
two Giants first and second Clowns, and the Prince and Prin- 
cess (who had been, all the time of the Fairy's speech, and 
actuall}' while under their father's scimitar, unhooking their 
dresses) became the most elegant Harlequin and Columbine 
that I have seen for many a long day. The nose flew up to 
the ceiling, the music began a jig, and the two clowns, after 
saying, "How are you?" went and knocked down Panta- 
loon. 



IV. 

On the conclusion of the pantomime, the present memorial- 
ist had the honor to conduct the ladies under his charge to the 
portico of the theatre, w^here the green fly was in waiting to 
receive them. The driver was not more inebriated than usual ; 
the young page with the gold-knobbed hat was there to protect 
his mistresses ; and though the chaperon of the party certainly 
invited me to return with them to Brompton and there drink 
tea, the proposal was made in terms so faint, and the refresh- 
ment offered was so moderate, that I decUned to journey six 
miles on a cold night in order to partake of such a meal. The 
waterman of the coach-stand, who had made himself conspicu- 
ous by bawling out for Mrs. Flather's carriage, was importu- 
nate with me to give him sixpence for pushing the ladies into 
the vehicle. But it was my opinion that Mrs. Flather ought 
to settle that demand ; and as, while the fellow was urging 
it, she only pulled up the glass, bidding Cox's man to drive 
on, I of course did not interfere. In vulgar and immoral lan- 
guage he indicated, as usual, his discontent. I treated the 
fellow with playful and, I hope, gentlemanlike satire. 

Master Jones, who would not leave the box in the theatre 
until the people came to shroud it with browMi-hoUands, (by the 
way, to be the last person in a theatre — to put out the last 
light — and then to find one's way out of the vast, black, lonely 
place, must require a ver}' courageous heart) — Master Jones, 
l,say, had previously taken leave of us, putting his arm under 
that of his father's footman, who had been in the pit, and who 
conducted him to Russell Square. I heard Augustus proposing 
to have oysters as they went home, though he had twice in the 
course of the performance made excursions to the cake-roora 
of the theatre, where he had partaken of oranges, macaroons, 
apples, and ginger-beer. 

As the altercation between mj'self and the linkman was going 



IN LONDON. 433 

on, 3'onng Grigg (brother of Grigg of the Lifeguards, himself 
reading for the Bar) came up, and iiooking his arm into mine, 
desired the man to leave off' "chaffing" me; asked him if he 
would take a bill at three months for the money ; told him if he 
would call at the " Horns Tavern," Kennington, next Tuesday 
week, he would find sixpence there, done up for him in a brown 
paper parcel ; and quite routed my opponent. '' I know you, 
Mr. Grigg," said he; "you're a gentleman, you are:" and 
so retired, leaving the victory with me. 

Youno; Mr. Grioo- is one of those vouns: bucks about town, 
who goes ever}* night of liis life to two Theatres, to the Casino, 
to AVeippert's balls, to the Cafe de I'Haymarket, to Bob 
Slogger's, the boxing-house, to the Harmonic Meetings at the 
" Kidney Cellars," and other places of fashionable resort. He 
knows everybody' at these haunts of pleasure ; takes boxes for 
the actors' benefits ; has the word from head-quarters about 
the ve7iue of the fight between Putney Sambo and the Tut- 
bur}' Pet ; gets up little dinners at their public-houses ; shoots 
pigeons, fights cocks, plays fives, has a boat on the river, and 
a room at Rummer's in Conduit Street, besides his Chambers 
at the Temple, where his parents, Sir John and Lady Grigg, 
of Portman Square, and Grigsby Hall, Yorkshire, believe that 
he is assiduously occupied in studying the Law. " Tom applies 
too much," her ladyship says. " His father was obliged to 
remove him from Cambridge on account of a brain-fever brought 
on b}' hard reading, and in consequence of the jealousy of some 
of the collegians ; otherwise, I am told, he must have been 
Senior Wrangler, and seated first of the Tripod." 

" I'm going to begin the evening," said this ingenuous young 
fellow; "I've only been at the Lowther Arcade, Weippert's 
hop, and the bilUard-rooms. I just toddled in for half an hour 
to see Brooke in Othello, and looked in for a few minutes be- 
hind the scenes at the Adelphi. What shall be the next resort 
of pleasure. Spec, my elderly juvenile? Shall it be the ' Sherrj^- 
Cobbler-Stall,' or the 'Cave of Harmony?* There's some 
prime glee-singing there." 

''What! is the old 'Cave of Harmony' still extant?" I 
asked. " I have not been there these twenty years." And 
memory carried me back to the days when Lightsides of 
Corpus, m3'self, and little Oaks, the Johnian, came up to town 
in a chaise-and-four, at the long vacation at the end of otlr 
freshman's j^ear, ordered turtle and venison for dinner at the 
" Bedford," blubbered over Black-eyed Susan at the play, and 
then finished the evening at that very Harmonic Cave, where 

28 



434 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

the famous English Impro^dsatore sang with such prodigious 
talent that we asked him down to stay with us in the country. 
Spurgin, and Hawker, the fellow-commoner of our College, 
I remember me, were at the Cave too, and Bardolph, of Brase- 
nose. Lord, lord ! what a battle and struggle and wear and 
tear of life there lias been since then ! Hawker levanted, and 
Spurgin is dead these ten years ; little Oaks is a whiskered 
Captain of Heavy Dragoons, who cut down no end of Sikhs 
at Sobraon ; Lig^tsides, a Tractarian parson, who turns his 
head and walks another way when we meet ; and 3'our humble 
servant — well, never mind. But in my spirit I saw them — 
aU those blooming and jovial young boys — and Lightsides, 
with a cigar in his face, and a bang-up white coat, covered with 
mother-of-pearl cheese-plates, bellowing out for "First and 
Second Turn-out," as our yellow post-chaise came rattling up 
to the inn-door at Ware. 

" And so the ' Cave of Harmony' is open," I said, looking 
at little Grigg with a sad and tender interest, and feeling that 
I was about a hundred years old. 

^^ I believe you^ my haw-aw-oy!'' said he, adopting the tone 
of an exceedingl}' refined and popular actor, whose choral and 
comic powers render him a general favorite. 

"Does Bivins keep it?" I asked, in a voice of profound 
melanchol}^ 

" Hoh ! What a flat you are! You might as well ask 
if Mrs. Siddons acted Lady Macbeth to-night, and if Queen 
Anne's dead or not. I tell you what, Spec, my boy — you're 
getting a regular old flat — fogy, sir, a positive old fogy. 
How the deuce do you pretend to be a man about town, and 
not know that Bivins has left the Cavern ? Law bless j'ou ! 
Come in and see : I know the landlord — I'll introduce jovl 
to him." 

This was an ofler which no man could resist ; and so Grigg 
and I went through the Piazza, and down the steps of that well- 
remembered place of convivialit3\ Grigg knew everj'bod}' ; 
wagged his head in at the bar, and called for two glasses of 
liis particular mixture ; nodded to the singers ; winked at one 
friend — put his little stick against his nose as a token of 
recognition to another ; and calling the waiter by his Christian 
name, poked him pla}' fully with the end of his cane, and asked 
lii-m whether he, Grigg, should have a lobster kidney, or a 
mashed oyster and scalloped 'taters, or a poached rabbit, for 
supper ? 

The room was full of young rakish-looking lads, with a 



IN LONDON. 435 

dubious sprinkling of us middle-aged youth, and stalwart red- 
faced fellows from the country, with whiskey-noggins before 
them, and bent upon seeing Ufe. A grand piano had been 
introduced into the apartment, which did not exist in the old 
days : otherwise all was as of yore — smoke rising from scores 
of human chimneys, waiters bustling about with cigars and 
liquors in the intervals of the melody — and the President of 
the meeting (Bivins no more) encouraging gents to give their 
orders. 

Just as the music was about to begin, I looked opposite me* 
and there, by heavens ! sat^ardolph of Brasenose, only a httle 
more purple and a few shades more dingy than he used to look 
twenty 3'ears ago. 



V. 

*' Look at that old Greek in the cloak and fur collar opposite,'* 
said my friend, Mr. Grigg. "That chap is here every night. 
They call him Lord Farintosh. He has five glasses of whiskey- 
and- water every night — seventeen hundred and twenty-five goes 
of alcohol in a year ; we totted it up one night at the bar. James 
the waiter is now taking number three to him. He don't count 
the wine he has had at dinner." Indeed, James the waiter, 
knowing the gentleman's peculiarities, as soon as he saw Mr. 
Bardolph's glass nearly empty, brought him another noggin and 
a jug of boiUng water without a word. 

Memory carried me instantaneously back to the days of my 
youth. I had the honor of being at school with Bardolph before 
he went to Brasenose ; the under boys used to look up at him 
from afar off, as at a godlike being. He was one of the head 
boys of the school ; a prodigious dandy in pigeon-hole trousers, 
ornamented with what they called " tucks " in front. He wore 
a ring — leaving the little finger on which he wore the jewel out 
of his pocket, in which he carried the rest of his hand. He had 
whiskers even then : and to this day I cannot understand why he 
is not seven feet high. When he shouted out, " Under boy ! " 
we small ones trembled and came to him. I recollect he called 
me once from a hundred yards off, and I came up in a tremor. 
He pointed to the ground. 

" Pick up my hockey-stick," he said, pointing towards it with 
the hand with the ring on ! He had dropped the stick. He 
was too great, wise, and good, to stoop to pick it up himself. 

He got the silver medal for Latin Sapphics,, in tlie 3ear 
Pogram was gold-medallist. When he went up to Oxford, the 



436 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

Head Master, the Rev. J. Flibber, complimented him in a vale* 
dictorj' speech, made him a present of books, and prophesied 
that he would do great things at the University. He had got 
a scholarship, and won a prize-poem, which the Doctor read 
out to the sixth form with great emotion. It was on "The 
Recollections of Childhood," and the last lines were, — 

" Qualia prospiciens catulus ferit aethera risu, 
Ipsaque trans lunae cornua vacca salit." 

> I thought of these things rapidl}', gazing on the individual 
before me. The brilUant 3'oung fallow of 1815 (bj'-the-by it 
was the Waterloo j^ear, by which some people may remember 
it better ; but at school we spoke of 3'ears as " Pogram's year," 
" Tokely's year," &c.) — there, I say, sat before me the dashing 
young buck of 1815, a fat, muzz}-, red-faced old man, in a 
battered hat, absorbing whiskey-and-water, and half listening 
to the singing. 

A wild, long-haired, professional gentleman, with a fluty 
voice and with his shirt- collar turned down, began to sing as 
follows : — 

"WHEN THE GLOOM IS ON THE GLEN. 

" When the moonlight's on the mountain 

And the gloom is on the glen, 
At the cross beside the fountain 

There is one will meet thee then. 
At the cross beside the fountain ; 

Yes, the cross beside the fountain. 
There is one will meet thee then ! 

IDown goes half of Mr. Bardolph's iVb. 3 Whiskey during this 

refrain.'] 

" I have braved, since first we met, love, 
Many a danger in my course ; 
But I never can forget, love. 

That dear fountain, that old cross, 
Where, her mantle shrouded o'er her — 

For the winds were chilly then — 
First I met my Leonora, 
When the gloom was on the glen. 
Yes, I met my &c. 

\^Another gulp and almost total disappearance of Whiskey 'Go^ 

No. 3.] 

" Many a clime I've ranged since then, love, 
Many a land I've wandered o'er ; 
But a valley like that glen, love, 
Half so dear I never sor ! 



IN LONDON. 43? 

Ne'er saw maiden fairer, coyer, 

Than wert tliou, my true love, when 

In the gloaming first I saw yer, 
In the gloaming of the glen ! " 

Bardolph, who had not shown the least symptom of emotion 
as the gentleman with the fluty voice performed this delectable 
composition, began to whack, whack, whack on the mahogany 
with his pewter measure at the conclusion of the song, wishing, 
perhaps, to show that the noggin was empty ; in which manner 
James, the waiter, interpreted the signal, for he brought Mr. 
Bardolph another supply of liquor. 

The song, words, and music, composed and dedicated to 
Charles Bivins, Esquire, by Frederic Snape, and ornamented 
with a picture of a 3^oung lady, with large eyes and short petti- 
coats, leaning at a stone cross by a fountain, was now handed 
about the room by a waiter, and an}^ gentleman was at liberty 
to purchase it for half a crown. The man did not offer the song 
to Bardolph ; he was too old a hand. 

After a pause, the president of the musical gents cried out 
for silence again, and then stated to the company that Mr. 
Hoff would sing " The Red Flag" which announcement was 
received by the Society with immense applause, and Mr. Hofl", 
a gentleman whom I remember to have seen exceedingly un- 
well on board a Gravesend steamer, began the following terrific 
ballad : — 

"THE RED FLAG. 

*' Where the quivering lightning flings 

His arrows from out the clouds, 
And the howling tempest sings, 

And whistles among the shrouds, 
'Tis pleasant, 'tis pleasant to ride 

Along the foaming brine — 
Wilt be the Rover's bride I 

Wilt follow him, lady mine 1 
Hurrah ! 
For the bonny, bonny brine. 

" Amidst the storm and rack, 

You shall see our galley pass 
As a serpent, lithe and black, 

Glides through the waving grass. 
As the vulture swift and dark, 

Down on the ring-dove flies, 
You shall see the Rover's baric 

Swoop down upon his prize. 
Hurrah ! 
For the bonny, bonny prize. 



438 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

" Over her sides we dash, 

We gallop across her deck — 
Ha ! there's a ghastly gash 

On the merchant-captain's neck — 
Well shot, well shot, old Ned ! 

Well struck, well struck, black James ! 
Our arms are red, and our foes are dead. 

And we leave a ship in flames ! 
Hurrah ! 
For the bonny, bonny flames ! " 

Frantic shouts of applause and encore hailed the atrocious 
sentiments conve3'ed b}^ Mr. Hoff in this ballad, from ever3'bod3' 
except Bardolph, who sat muzz}' and unmoved, and onlj^ winked 
to the waiter to bring him some more whiske^^ 



VI. 

When the piratical ballad of Mr. Hoff was concluded, a 
simple and quiet-looking 3'oung gentleman performed a comic 
song, in a wa3' which, I must confess, inspired me with the 
utmost melanchol3' . Seated at the table with the other profes- 
sional gents, this 3'oung gentleman was in nowise to be dis- 
tinguished from an3^ other 3'oung man of fashion : he has a 
thin, handsome, and rather sad countenance ; and appears to 
be a perfectl3^ sober and meritorious 3'oung man. But suddenly 
(and I dare sa3^ ever3' night of his life) he pulls a little flexible, 
gra3' countr3'man's hat out of his pocket, and the moment he 
has put it on, his face assumes an expression of unutterable 
vacuit3' and foll3", his e3'es goggle round savage, and his 
mouth stretches almost to his ears, and he begins to sing a 
rustic song. 

The battle-song and the sentimental ballad already' published 
are, I trust, sufRcientl3' foolish, and fair specimens of "'jhe class 
of poetr3' to which the3' belong ; but the foll3^ of the comic 
countr3' song was so great and matchless, that I am not going 
to compete for a moment with the author, or to venture to 
attempt an3'thing like his st3de of composition. It was some- 
thing about a man going a-courting M0II3', and " fea3lher," and 
" k3'ows," and " peegs," and other rustic produce. The idiotic 
verse was interspersed with spoken passages, of corresponding 
imbecilit3\ For the time during which Mr. Grinsby performed 
this piece, he consented to abnegate altogether his daim to be 
considered as a reasonable being ; utterl3' to debase himself, in 
order to make the company laugh ; and to forget tht *-aak, di^' 
nity, and privileges of a man. 



IN LONDON. 439 

His song made me so profoundl}^ wretched that little Grigg, 
remarking m}^ depression, declared I was as slow as a parlia- 
mentar}' train. I was glad the}^ didn't have the song over 
again. When it was done, Mr. Grinsby put his little gray hat 
in his pocket, the maniacal grin subsided from his features, and 
he sat down with his natural^ sad and rather handsome 3^oung. 
countenance. j 

O Grinsb}^, thinks I, what a number of people and things in 
this world do you represent ! Though we weary listening to 
you, we may moralize over you ; though you sing a foolish, 
witless song, you poor j^oung melancholy jester, there is some 
good in it that may be had for the seeking. Perhaps that lad 
has a familj' at home dependent on his grinning : I may enter- 
tain a reasonable hope that he has despair in his heart ; a com- 
plete notion of the folly of the business in which he is engaged ; 
a contempt for the fools laughing and guffawing round about at 
his miserable jokes ; and a perfect weariness of mind at their 
original dulness and continued repetition. What a sinking of 
spirit must come over that joung man, quiet in his chamber 
or famil}^, orderl}" and sensible like other mortals, when the 
thought of tom-fool hour comes across him, and that at a cer- 
tain time that night, whatever ma}' be his health, or distaste, 
or mood of mind or body, there he must be, at a table at the 
" Cave of Harmony," uttering insane ballads, with an idiotic 
grin on his face and hat on his head. 

To suppose that Grinsby has an}* personal pleasure in that 
song, would be to have too low an opinion of human nature : 
to imagine that the applauses of the multitude of the frequent- 
ers of the Cave tickled his vanity, or are bestowed upon him 
deservedly — would be, I say, to think too hardly of him. 
Look at him. He sits there quite a quiet, orderly young fellow. 
Mark with what an abstracted, sad air he joins in the chorus of 
Mr. Snape's second song, " The Minaret's bells o'er the Bos- 
phorus toll," and having applauded his comrade at the end of 
the song (as I have remarked these poor gentlemen always do), 
moodily resumes the stump of his cigar. 

" I wonder, my dear Grigg, how many men there are in the 
city who follow a similar profession to Grinsby's? What a 
number of poor rogues, wits in their circle, or bilious, or in 
debt, or henpecked, or otherwise miserable in their private cir- 
cumstances, come grinning out to dinner of a night, and laugh 
and crack, and let off their good stories like yonder professional 
funny fellow ? Why, I once went into the room of that famous 
diuuer-party conversationalist and wit, Horsely Collard ; and 



440 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

whilst he was in his dressing-room arranging his wig, just 
looked over the books on the table before his sofa. There 
were ' Burton's Anatomy ' for the quotations, three of which he 
let off that night ; ' Spence's Literary Anecdotes,' of which 
he fortuitously introduced a couple in the course of the evening ; 
' Baker's Chronicle ; ' the last new Novel, and a book of Meta- 
physics, every one of which I heard him quote, besides four 
stories out of his commonplace book, at which I took a peep 
under the pillow. He was like Grinsby." Who isn't like 
Grinsby in life ? thought I to myself, examining that young 
fellow. 

•' When Bawler goes down to the House of Commons from 
a meeting with his creditors, and having been a bankrupt a 
month before, becomes a patriot all of a sudden, and pours you 
out an intensely interesting speech upon the West Indies, or 
the Window Tax, he is no better than the poor gin-and-water 
practitioner yonder, and performs in his Cave, as Grinsby in 
his under the Piazza. 

" When Serjeant Bluebag fires into a witness, or performs a 
jocular or a pathetic speech to a jury, in what is he better than 
Grinsb}^ except in so far as the amount of gain goes ? — than 
poor Grinsby rapping at the table and cutting professional 
jokes, at half-a-pint-of-whiske}'' fee. 

" When Tightrope, the celebrated literary genius, sits down 
to write and laugh — with the children very likel}- ill at home — 
with a strong personal desire to write a tragedy or a sermon, 
with his wife scolding him, his head racking with pain, hib 
mother-in-law making a noise at his ears, and telling him that 
he is a heartless and abandoned ruffian, his tailor in the pas- 
sage, vowing that he will not quit that place until his little bill 
is settled — when, I say. Tightrope writes off, under the most 
miserable private circumstances, a brilliant funny article, in 
how much is he morally superior to my friend Grinsby ? When 
Lord Colchicum stands bowing and smiling before his sovereign, 
with gout in his toes and grief in his heart ; when parsons in 
the pulpit — when editors at their desks — forget their natural 
griefs, pleasures, opinions, to go through the business of life, 
the masquerade of existence, in what are they better than 
Grinsby yonder, who has similarly to perform his buffooning?" 

As I was continuing in this moral and interrogatory mood — 
no doubt boring poor little Grigg, who came to the Cave for 
pleasure, and not for philosophical discourse — Mr. Bardolph 
opposite caught a sight of the present writer through the fumes 
of the cigars, and came across to our table, holding his fourth 



IN LONDON. 441 

glass of toddy in his hand. He held out the other to me : it 
was hot and gout}^, and not particularly clean. 

"Deuced queer place this, hey?" said he, pretending to 
surve}^ it with the air of a stranger. " I come here ever}' now 
and then, on my way home to Lincoln's Inn — from — from 
parties at the other end of the town. It is frequented by a 
parcel of queer people — low shop-boys and attorneys' clerks ; 
but hang it, sir, they know a gentleman when they see one, 
and not one of those fellows would dare to speak to me — no, 
not one of 'em, by Jove — if I didn't address him first, by 
Jove ! I don't suppose there's a man in this room could con- 
strue a page in the commonest Greek book. You heard that 
donkey singing about ' Leonorar ' and ' before her ? ' How 
Flibber would have given it to us for such rhymes, hey? A 
parcel of ignoramuses ! but, hang it, sir, they do know a gen- 
tleman ! " And here he winked at me with a vinous bloodshot 
e^'e, as much as to intimate that he was infinitely superior to 
every person in the room. 

Now this Bardolph, having had the ill-luck to get a fel- 
lowship, and subsequently a small private fortune, has done 
nothing since the year 1820 but get drunk and read Greek. 
He despises every man that does not know that language (so 
that you and I, my dear sir, come in for a fair share of his 
contempt) . He can still put a slang song into Greek Iambics, 
or turn a police report into the language of Tacitus or Herodo- 
tus ; but it is difficult to see what accomplishment be3'ond this 
the booz}" old mortal possesses. He spends nearly a third part 
of his life and income at his dinner, or on his whiskey at a 
tavern ; more than another third portion is spent in bed. It is 
past noon before he gets up to breakfast, and to spell over 
The Times^ which business of the day being completed, it is 
time for him to dress and take his walk to the Club to dinner. 
He scorns a man who puts his ^'s in the wrong place, and spits 
at a human being who has not had a University education. 
And yet I am sure that bustling waiter pushing about with 
a bumper of cigars ; that tallow-faced 3'oung comic singer ; 
3^onder harmless and happy Snobs, enjoying the conviviality of 
the evening (and all the songs are quite modest now, not like 
the ribald old ditties which the}^ used to sing in former days) , 
are more useful, more honorable, and more worthy men, than 
that whiskey fied old scholar who looks down upon them and 
their like. 

He said he would have a sixth glass if we would stop : but 
we didn't ; and he took his sixth glass without us. My melan- 



442 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

cholj' 3'oung friend had begun another comic song, and I could 
bear it no more. The market carts were rattling into Co vent 
Garden ; and the illuminated clock marked all sorts of small 
hours as we concluded this night's pleasure. 



GOING TO SEE A MAN HANGED.* 

July, 1840. 

X , who had voted with Mr. Ewart for the abolition of 

the punishment of death, was anxious to see the effect on the 
public mind of an execution, and asked me to accompanj^ him 
to see Courvoisier killed. We had not the advantage of a 
sheriffs order, like the " six hundred noblemen and gentlemen " 
who were admitted within the walls of the prison ; but deter- 
mined to mingle with the crowd at the foot of the scaffold, and 
take up our positions at a very early hour. 

As I was to rise at three in the morning, I went to bed at 
ten, thinking that five hours' sleep w^ould be ampl^^ sufficient to 
brace me against the fatigues of the coming day. But, as 
might have been expected, the event of the morrow was perpet- 
ually before my eyes through the night, and kept them wide 
open. I heard all the clocks in the neighborhood chime the 
hours in succession ; a dog from some court hard bj' kept up a 
pitiful howling ; at one o'clock, a cock set up a feeble, melan- 
chol}^ crowing ; shortly after two the daj'light came peeping gra}' 

through the window-shutters ; and b}' the time that X 

arrived, in fulfilment of his promise, I had been asleep about 
half an hour. He, more wise, had not gone to rest at all, but 
had remained up all night at the Club, along with Dash and two 
or three more. Dash is one of the most eminent wits in London, 
and had kept the company merry all night with appropriate 
jokes about the coming event. It is curious that a murder is a 
great inspirer of jokes. We all like to laugh and have our fling 
about it ; there is a certain grim pleasure in the circumstance — 
a perpetual jingling antithesis between Jife and death, that is 
sure of its effect. 

In mansion or garret, on down or straw, surrounded by 
weeping friends and solemn oily doctors, or tossing unheeded 

* Originally published in Eraser's Magazine. 



m LONDON. 443 

upon scanty hospital beds, there were man}' people in this great 
cit}' to whom that Suncla}" night was to be the last of any that 
they should pass on earth here. In the course of half a dozen 
dark, wakeful hours, one had leisure to think of these (and a 
little, too, of that certain supreme night, that shall come at 
one time or other, when he who writes shall be stretched upon 
the last bed, prostrate in the last struggle, taking the last look 
of dear faces that have cheered us here, and lingering — one 
moment more — ere we part for the tremendous journey) ; but, 
chie%, I could not help thinking, as each clock sounded, what 
is he doing now ? has he heard it in his little room in Newgate 
3'onder? Eleven o'clock. He has been writing until now. 
The gaoler says he is a pleasant man enough to be with ; but 
he can hold out no longer, and is very weary. " Wake me at 
four," sa3^s he, " for I have still much to put down." From 
eleven to twelve the gaoler hears how he is grinding his teeth 
in his sleep. At twelve he is up in his bed, and asks, "Is it 
the time ? " He has plent}^ more time ^^et for sleep ; and he 
sleeps, and the bell goes on tolling. Seven hours more — five 
hours more. Mau}^ a carriage is clattering through the streets, 
bringing ladies away from evening parties ; man}^ bachelors 
are reeling home after a jolty night ; Covent Garden is alive 
and the light coming through the cell-window turns the gaoler's 
candle pale. Four hours more! " Courvoisier," sa3's the 
gaoler, shaking him, "it's four o'clock now, and I've woke 
you as 3^ou told me ; but there's no call for j'ou to get up yet." 
The poor wretch leaves his bed, however, and makes his last 
toilet ; and then falls to writing, to tell the world how he did 
the crime for which he has suffered. This time he will tell the 
truth, and the whole truth. They bring him his breakfast 
"from the coffee-shop opposite — tea, coffee, and thin bread 
and butter." He will take nothing, however, but goes on 
writing. He has to write to his mother — the pious mother far 
awa}^ in his own country — who reared him and loved him ; 
and even now has sent him her forgiveness and her blessing. 
He finishes his memorials and letters, and makes his will, dis- 
posing of his little miserable propert}' of books and tracts that 
pious people have furnished him with. Oe 6 Juillet^ 1840. 
Francois Benjamin Courvoisier vous donne ceci, mon ami^ pour 
souvenir.'' He has a token for his dear friend the gaoler; an- 
other for his dear friend the under-sheriff. As the day of the 
convict's death draws nigh, it is painful to see how he fastens 
upon everybody who approaches him, how pitifully he clings 
to them and loves them. 



444 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

While these things are going on within the prison (with 
which we are made accurately acquainted b}' the copious chron- 
icles of such events which are published subsequently), X 's 

cariiage has driven up to the door of my lodgings, and we 
have partaken of an elegant dejeuner that has been prepared 
for the occasion. A cup of coffee at half-past three in the 

morning is uncommonly pleasant ; and X enlivens us with 

the repetition of the jokes that Dash has just been making. 
Admirable, certainly — they must hav^ had a merry night of 
it, that's clear ; and we stoutly debate whether, when one has 
to get up so earl}' in the morning, it is best to have an hour or 
two of sleep, or wait and go to bed afterwards at the end of 
the day's work. That fowl is extraordinarily tough — the 
wing, even, is as hard as a board ; a slight disappointment, 
for there is nothing else for breakfast. '' Will an}' gentleman 
have some sherrj' and soda-water before he sets out? It clears 
the brains famousl}'." Thus primed, the party sets out. Tlie 
coachman has dropped asleep on the box, and wakes up wildW 
as the hall-door opens. It is just four o'clock. About this 
very time tlie}' are waking up poor — pshaw! who is for a 

cigar? X does not smoke himself; but vows and protests, 

in tlie kindest wav in the world, that he does not care in the 

least for the new drab-silk linings in his carriage. Z , who 

smokes, mounts, however, the box. "Drive to Snow Hill," 
sa3'S the owner of the chariot. The policemen, who are the 
onl}' people in the street, and are standing b}', look knowing — 
thev know what it means well enouarh. 

How cool and clean the streets look, as the carriage startles 
the echoes that have been asleep in the corners all night. 
Somebody has been sweeping the pavements clean in the night- 
time sureh' ; they would not soil a lad^^'s white satin shoes, 
they are so dry and neat. There is not a cloud or a breath 

in the air, except Z 's cigar, which whiffs off, and soars 

straight upwards in volumes of white, pure smoke. The trees 
in the squares look bright and green — as bright as leaves in 
the country in June. We who keep late hours don't know the 
beauty of London air and verdure ; in the early morning they 
are delightful — the most fresh and lively companions possible. 
But they cannot bear the crowd and the bustle of mid-da3^ 
You don't know them then — they are no longer the same 
things. AVe have come to Gray's Inn ; there is actually dew 
npon the grass in the gardens ; and the windows of the stout 
old red houses are all in a flame. 

As we enter Holborn the town grows more animated ; and 



m LONDON. 445 

there are alread}^ twice as many people in the streets as you 
see at inid-da}' in a German Residenz or an English provincial 
town. The gin-shop keepers have many of them taken their 
shutters down, and man}' persons are issuing from them pipe 
in hand. Down they go along the broad bright street, their 
blue shadows marching after them ; for tlie^^ are all bound the 
same wa}', and are bent like us upon seeing the hanging. 

It is twent}' minutes past four as we pass St. Sepulchre's : 
by this time many hundred people are in the street, and man}^ 
more are coming up Snow Hill. Before us lies Newgate 
Prison ; but something a great deal more awful to look at, 
which seizes the ej'e at once, and makes the heart beat, is 





a:: 



There it stands black and ready, jutting out from a little 
door in the prison. As you see it, 3^ou feel a kind of dumb 
electric shock, which causes one to start a little, and give a 
sort of gasp for breath. The shock is over in a second ; and 
presently 3'ou examine the object before yoxx with a certain 
feeling of complacent curiosit}^ At least, such was the effect 
that the gallows produced upon the writer, who is trjing to set 
down all his feelings as the}'' occurred, and not to exaggerate 
them at all. 

After the gallows-shock had subsided, we went down into 
the crowd, which was ver}' numerous, but not dense as yet. It 
was evident that the day's business had not begun. People 
sauntered up, and formed groups, and talked ; the new comers 
asking those who seemed habitues of the place about former 
executions ; and did the victim hang with his face towards the 
clock or towards Ludgate Hill? and had he the rope round his 
neck when he came on the scaffold, or was it put on by Jack 

Ketch afterwards? and had Lord W taken a window, and 

which was he? I may mention the noble Marquis's name, as 

he was not at the exhibition. A pseudo W was pointed 

out in an opposite window, towards whom all the people in 
our neighborhood looked eagerly, and with great respect too. 
The mob seemed to have no sort of ill-will against him, but 



446 SKETCHES A^^D TRAVELS 

S3'rapath3^ and admirp.tion. This noble lord's personal courage 
and strength have won the plebs over to him. Perhaps his 
exploits against policemen have occasioned some of this pop- 
ularit}^ ; for the mob hate them, as.children the schoolmaster. 

Throughout the whole four hours, however, the mob was 
extraordinaril}' gentle and good-humored. At first we had 
leisure to talk to the people about us ; and I recommend 

X 's brother senators of both sides of the House to see 

more of this same people and to appreciate them better. Hon- 
orable Members are battling and struggling in the House ; 
shouting, yelling, crowing, hear-hearing, pooh-poohing, making- 
speeches of three columns, and gaining "great Conservative 
triumphs," or " signal successes of the Reform cause," as the 
case ma}' be. Three hundred and ten gentlemen of good for- 
tune, and able foi" the most part to quote Horace, declare sol- 
emnly- that unless Sir Robert comes in, the nation is ruined. 
Three hundred and fifteen on the other side swear b}^ their 
great gods that the safety of the empire depends upon Lord 
John ; and to this end the^" quote Horace too. I declare that 
I have never been in a great London crowd without thinking 
of what the}' call the two "great" parties in England with 
wonder. For which of the two great leaders do these people 
care, I pray you? When Lord Stanley withdrew his Irish bill 
the other night, were they in transports of joy, like worthy 
persons who read the Globe and the Chronicle ? or when he beat 
the Ministers, were they wild with delight, like honest gentle- 
men who read the Post and the Timf^s ? Ask yonder ragged 
fellow, who has evidently frequented debating-clubs, and speaks 
with good sense and shrewd good-nature. He cares no more 
for Lord John than he does for Sir Robert ; and, with due 
respect be it said, would mind very little if both of them were 
ushered out by Mr. Ketch, and took their places under yonder 
black beam. What are the two great parties to him, and those 
like him? Sheer wind, hollow humbug, absurd claptraps; a 
silly mummery of dividing and debating, wli^ch does not in 
the least, however it may turn, affect his condition. It has 
been so ever since the happy days when Whigs and Tories 
began ; and n pretty pastime no doubt it is for both. August 
parties, great balances of British freedom : are not the two 
sides quite as active, and eager, and loud, as at their very birth, 
and ready to fight for place as stoutly as ever they fought be- 
fore? But lo ! in the meantime, whilst you are jangling and 
brawhng over the accoynts, Populus, whose estate you have 
administered while he was an infant, and could not take care 



IN LONDON. 447 

of himself — Populus has been growing and growing, till he is 
everj' bit as wise as his guardians. Talk to our ragged friend. 
He is not so polished, perhaps, as a member of the "Oxford 
and Cambridge Club ; " he has not been to Eton ; and never 
read Horace in his life : but he can think just as soundl}' as the 
best of 3'ou ; he can speak quite as strongly in his own rough 
way ; he has been reading all sorts of books of late 3xarvS', and 
gathered together no little information. He is as good a man 
as the common run of us ; and there are ten million more men 
in the country as good as he, — ten million, for whom we, in 
our infinite superiority, are acting as guardians, and to whom, 
in our bounty, we give — exactlj^ nothing. Put 3'ourself in 
their position, worth}- sir. You and a hundred others find 
3^ourselves in some lone place, where 3-ou set up a government. 
You take a chief, as is natural ; he is the cheapest order-keeper 
in the world. You establish half a dozen worthies, whose fam- 
ilies 3'ou sa3^ shall have the privilege to legislate for you for 
ever ; half a dozen more, who shall be appointed b3' a choice 
of thirty of the rest : and the other sixty, who shall have no 
choice, vote, place, or privilege, at all. Honorable sir, suppose 
that 3'ou are one of the last sixt3' : how will 3'ou feel, 3'ou who 
have intelligence, passions, honest pride, as well as 3'Our neigh- 
bor ; how will you feel towards your equals, in whose hands lie 
all the powder and all the propert3" of the communit3'? Would 
3'Ou love and honor them, tamety acquiesce in their superiorit3% 
see their privileges, and go yourself disregarded without a pang? 
3^ou are not a man if 3^ou would. I am not talking of right or 
wrong, or debating questions of government. But ask m3' 
friend there, with the ragged elbows and no shirt, what he 
thinks? You have 3^our party. Conservative or Whig, as it 
ma3' be. You believe that an aristocrac3' is an institution nec- 
essar3', beautiful, and virtuous. You are a gentleman, in other 
words, and stick b}" 3'our part3^ 

And our friend with the elbows (the crowd is thickening 
hugel3^ all this time) sticks b3^ his. Talk to him of Whig or 
Tor3", he grins at them : of virtual representation, pish ! He 
is a democrat^ and will stand by his friends, as 3'Ou by 3^ours ; 
and the3' are twent3- millions, his friends, of whom a vast mi- 
norit3^ now, a majont3' a few 3'ears hence, will be as good as 
3'OU. In the meantime we shall continue electing, and debat- 
ing, and dividing, and having ever3' day new triumphs for the 
glorious cause of Conservatism, or the glorious cause of Ke- 
form, until — 



448 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

What is the meaning of this unconscionable republican ti- 
rade — apropos of a hanging? Such feelings, I think, must 
come across an}- man in a vast multitude like this. What 
good sense and intelligence haA^e most of the people by whom 
3'ou are surrounded ; how much sound humor does one hear 
bandied about from one to another ! A great number of 
coarse phrases are used, that would make ladies in drawing- 
rooms blush ; but the morals of the men are good and heart}'. 
A ragamuffin in the crowd (a powder}' baker in a white sheep's- 
wool cap) uses some indecent expression to a woman near : 
there is an instant cry of shame, which silences the man, and a 
dozen people are ready to give the woman protection. The 
crowd has grown ver}^ dense b}' this time, it is about six o'clock, 
and there is great heaving, and pushing, and swa^'ing to and 
fro ; but round the women the men have formed a circle, and 
keep them as much as possible out of the rush and trample. 
In one of the houses near us, a galler}- has been formed on 
the roof. Seats were here let, and a number of persons of 
various degrees were occupying them. Several tips}', disso- 
lute-looking young men, of the Dick Swiveller cast, were in 
this gallery. One was lolling over the sunshiny tiles, with a 
fierce sodden face, out of which came a pipe, and which was 
shaded by long matted hair, and a hat cocked very much on 
one side. This gentleman was one of a party which had evi- 
dently not been to bed on Sunday night, but had passed it in 
some of those delectable night-houses in the neighborhood of 
Covent Garden. The debauch was not over yet, and the 
women of the party were giggling, drinking, and romping, 
as is the wont of these delicate creatures ; sprawling here and 
there, and falling upon the knees of one or other of the males. 
Their scarfs were off their shoulders, and you saw the sun 
shining down upon the bare white flesh, and the shoulder- 
points glittering like burning-glasses. The people about us 
were very indignant at some of the proceedings of this de- 
bauched crew, and at last raised up such a yell as frightened 
them into shame, and they were more orderly for the remain- 
der of the day. The windows of the shops opposite began to 
fill apace, and our before-mentioned friend with ragged elbows 
pointed out a celebrated fashionable character who occupied 
one of them ; and, to our surprise, knew as much about him 
as the Court Journal or the Morning Post. Presently he enter- 
tained us with a long and pretty accurate account of the his- 
tory of Lady , and indulged in a judicious criticism upon 

her last work. I have met with many a country gentleman 



IN LONDON. 449 

who had not read half as manj^ books as this honest fellow, this 
shrewd proletaire in a black shirt. The people about him took up 
and carried on the conversation ver}' knowingly, and w^ere very 
little behind him in point of information. It was just as good 
a company as one meets on common occasions. I was in a 
genteel crowd in one of the galleries at the Queen's coronation ; 
indeed, in point of intelligence, the democrats were quite equal 
to the aristocrats. How many more such groups were there in 
this immense multitude of nearl}?^ forty thousand, as some say? 
How many more such throughout the country? I never yet, 
as I said before, have been in an English mob, without the 
same feeling for the persons who composed it, and without won- 
der at the vigorous, orderly good sense and intelligence of the 
people. 

The character of the crowd was as yet, however, quite fes- 
tive. Jokes bandying about here and there, and joll}- laughs 
breaking out. Some men were endeavoring to climb up a 
kaden pipe on one of the houses. The landlord came out, 
and endeavored with might and main to pull them down. 
Many thousand e3^es turned upon this contest immediately. 
All sorts of voices issued from the crowd, and uttered choice 
expressions of slang. When one of the men was pulled down 
b}^ the leg, the waves of this black mob-ocean laughed innu- 
merabty ; when one fellow slipped away, scrambled up the 
pipe, and made good his lodgment on the shelf, we were all 
made happ}^, and encouraged him b}^ loud shouts of admira- 
tion. What is there so particularly delightful in the spectacle 
of a man clambering up a gas-pipe ? Why were we kept for a 
quarter of an hour in deep interest gazing upon this remarka- 
ble scene ? Indeed it is hard to say : a man does not know 
what a fool he is until he tries ; or, at least, what mean fol- 
lies will amuse him. The other day I went to Astley's, and 
saw clown come in with a foolscap and pinafore, and six small 
boys who represented his schoolfellows. To them enters 
schoolmaster ; horses clown, and flogs him hugely on the back 
part of his pinafore. I never read anything in Swift, Boz, 
Rabelais, Fielding, Paul de Kock, which delighted me so much 
as this sight, and caused me to laugh so profoundl3^ And whj^ ? 
What is there so ridiculous in the sight of one miserabl}'' 
rouged man beating another on the breech? Tell us where 
the fun lies in this and the before-mentioned episode of the 
gas-pipe? Vast, indeed, are the capacities and ingenuities of 
the human soul that can find, in incidents so wonderfully smail, 
means of contemplation and amusement. 



450 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

Really the time passed awa}^ with extraordinary quickness. 
A thousand things of the sort related here came to amuse us. 
First the workmen knocking and hammering at the scaffold, 
mysterious clattering of blows was heard within it, and a ladder 
painted black was carried round, and into the interior of the 
edifice by a small side-door. We all looked at this little ladder 
and at each other — things began to be very interesting. Soon 
came a squad of pohcemen ; stalwart, rosy-looking men, saying 
much for City feeding ; well-dressed, well-limbed, and of ad- 
mirable good-humor. They paced about the open space between 
the prison and the barriers which kept in the crowd from the scaf- 
fold. The front line, as far as I could see, was chiefly occupied 
b}^ blackguards and boys — professional persons, no doubt, who 
saluted the policemen on their appearance with a vollej^ of jokes 
and ribaldry. As far as I could judge from faces, there were 
more blackguards of sixteen and seventeen than of any ma- 
turer age ; stunted, sallow, ill-grown lads, in rugged fustian, 
scowling about. There were a considerable number of girls, 
too, of the same age ; one that Cruikshank and Boz might have 
taken as a study for Nancy. The girl was a 3'Oung thief s mis- 
tress evidently ; if attacked, ready to repl}' without a particle of 
modest}'' ; could give as good ribaldr}' as she got ; made no se- 
cret (and there were several inquiries) as to her profession and 
means of livelihood. But with all this there was something 
good about the girl ; a sort of devil-ma3'-care candor and sim- 
plicit}^ that one could not fail to see. Her answers to some of 
the coarse questions put to her, were ver}^ ready and good-hu- 
mored.. She had a friend with her of the same age and class, 
of whom she seemed to be very fond, and who looked up to 
her for protection. Both of these women had beautiful e^^es. 
Devil-may-care's were extraordinarily bright and blue, an ad- 
mirabl}^ fair complexion, and a large red mouth full of white 
teeth. Au reste, ugl}' , stunted, thick -limbed, and by no means 
a beaut3\ Her friend could not be more than fifteen. Tliey 
were not in rags, but had greasy cotton shawls, and old, faded, 
rag-shop bonnets. I was curious to look at them, having, in 
late fashionable novels, read man}' accounts of such personages. 
Bah! what figments these novelists tell us ! Boz, who knows 
life well, knows that his Miss Nancy is the most unreal fantas- 
tical personage possible ; no more like a thief s mistress than 
one of Gesner's shepherdesses resembles a real countr}^ wench. 
He dare not tell the truth concerning such young ladies. The}' 
have, no doubt, virtues like other human creatures ; nay, their 
position engenders virtues that are not called into exercise 



IK LONDON. 451 

among other women. But on these an honest painter of human 
nature has no right to dwell ; not being able to paint the whole 
portrait, he has no right to present one or two favorable points 
as characterizing the whole : and therefore, in fact, had better 
leave the picture alone altogether. The new French literature 
is essentially false and worthless from this ver}^ error — the 
writers giving us favorable pictures of monsters, and (to sa}' 
nothing of decency or moralit}') pictures quite untrue to na- 
ture. 

But yonder, glittering through the crowd in Newgate Street 
— see, the Sheriffs' carriages are slowl}' making their wa}'. 
We have been here three hours ! Is it possible that the}'^ can 
have passed so soon? Close to the barriers where we are, the 
mob has become so dense that it is with difficulty a man can 
keep his feet. Each man, however, is very careful in protect- 
ing the women, and all are full of jokes and good-humor. The 
window^s of the shops opposite are now prett}^ nearl}^ filled by 
the persons who hired them. Man}' 3'oung dandies are there 
with moustaches and cigars ; some quiet, fat, familj'-parties of 
simple, honest tradesmen and their wives, as we fancy, who 
are looking on with the greatest imaginable calmness, and sip- 
ping their tea. Yonder is the sham Lord W , who is fling- 
ing various articles among the crowd ; one of his companions, 
a tall, burty man, with large moustaches, has provided himself 
with a squirt, and is aspersing the mob with brand3^-and-water. 
Honest gentleman ! high-bred aristocrat ! genuine lover of 
humor and wit ! I would walk some miles to see thee on the 
treadmill, thee and th}' Mohawk crew ! 

We tried to get up a hiss against these ruffians, but onty had 
a trifling success ; the crowd did not seem to think their offence 
ver3^ heinous ; and our friend, the philosopher in the ragged 
elbows, who had remained near us all the time, was not in- 
spired with an}' such savage disgust at the proceedings of cer- 
tain notorious young gentlemen, as I must confess fills my own 
particular bosom. He onl}'- said, " So-and-so is a lord, and 
they'll let him off," and then discoursed about Lord Ferrers 
being hanged. The philosopher knew the history pretty well, 
and so did most of the little knot of persons about him. and 
it must be a gratif3dng thing for 3'oung gentlemen to find that 
their actions are made the subject of this kind of conversa- 
tion. 

Scarce^ a word had been said about Courvoisier all this 
time. We were all, as far as I could judge, in just such a 
frame of mind as men are in when they are squeezing at the 



452 SKETCHES AXD TRAVELS 

pit-door of a pla^^ or pushing for a review or a Lord Mayor's 
show. We asked most of the men who were near us, whether 
they had seen man}' executions? most of them had, tlie philoso- 
pher especially ; whether the sight of them did any good ? 
" ' For the matter of that, no ; people did not care about them 
at all ; nobod}' ever thought of it after a bit." A countrj'man, 
who had left his drove in Smithfield, said the same thing ; he 
had seen a man hanged at York, and spoke of the ceremonj^ 
with perfect good sense, and in a quiet, sagacious way. 

J. S , the famous wit, now dead, had, I recollect, a good 

story upon the subject of executing, and of the terror which the 
punishment inspires. After Thistle wood and his companions 
were hanged, their heads were taken off, according to the sen- 
tence, and the executioner, as he severed each, held it up to 
the crowd, in the proper orthodox wa}', saying, "Here is the 
head of a traitor ! " At the sight of the first ghastl}^ head the 
people were struck with terror, and a general expression of 
disgust and fear broke from them. The second head was 
looked at also with much interest, but the excitement regard- 
ing the third head diminished. When the executioner had 
come to the last of the heads, he lifted it up, but, b}^ some 
clumsiness, allowed it to drop. At this the crowd j^elled out 
" ^A, Butter-fingers I '^ — the excitement had passed entirelj" 
awa3\ The punishment had grown to be a joke — Butter-fin- 
gers was the word — a prett}' commentary, indeed, upon the 
august nature of public executions, and the awful majest^^ of 
the law. 

It was past seven now ; the quarters rang and passed away ; 
the crowd began to grow very eager and more quiet, and we 
turned back ever}^ now and then and looked at St. Sepulchre's 
clock. Half an hour, twenty-five minutes. What is he doing 
now? He has his irons off by this time. A quarter: he's in 
the press-room now, no doubt. Now at last we had come to 
think about the man we were going to see hanged. How 
slowl}^ the clock crept over the last quarter ! Those who were 
able to turn round and see (for the crowd was now extraordi- 
narily dense) chronicled the time, eight minutes, five minutes ; 
at last — ding, dong, dong, dong ! — the bell is tolling the 
chimes of eight. 

• • • . «-. . . . 

Between the writing of this line and the last, the pen has 
been put down, as the reader ma}- suppose, and the person who 
is addressing him has gone through a pause of no very pleasant 
thoughts and recollections. The whole of the sickening, 



IN LONDON. 453 

ghastly, wicked scene passes before the eyes again ; and, 
indeed, it is an awful one to see, and very hard and painful to 
describe. 

As the clock began to strike, an immense sway and move- 
ment swept over the whole of that vast dense crowd. They 
were all uncovered directl}', and a great murmur arose, more 
awful, bizarre, and indescribable than any sound I had ever 
before heard. Women and children began to shriek horridly. 
I don't know whether it was the bell I heard ; but a dreadful 
quick, feverish kind of jangling noise mingled with the noise 
of the people, and lasted for about two minutes. The scaffold 
stood before us, tenantless and black ; the black chain was 
hanging down ready from the beam. Nobod}^ came. ''He 
has been respited," some one said; another said, "He has 
killed himself in prison." 

Just then, from under the black prison-door, a pale, quiet 
head peered out. It was shockingly bright and distinct ; it 
rose up direct^, and a man in black appeared on the sc^fibld, 
and was silently followed by about four more dark figures. 
The first was a tall grave man : we all knew who the second 
man was. " Thafs he — that's he! " 3'Ou heard the people say, 
as the devoted man came up. 

I have seen a cast of the head since, but, indeed, should 
never have known it. Courvoisier bore his punishment like a 
man, and walked very firmly. He was dressed in a new black 
suit, as it seemed : his shirt was open. His arms were tied in 
front of him. He opened his hands in a helpless kind of way, 
and clasped them once or twice together. He turned his head 
here and there, and looked about him for an instant with a 
wild, imploring look. His mouth was contracted into a sort of 
pitiful smile. He went and placed himself at once under the 
beam, with his face towards St. Sepulchre's. The tall, grave 
man in black twisted him round swiftly in the other direction, 
and, drawing from his pocket a nightcap, pulled it tight over 
the patient's head and face. I am not ashamed to say that I 
could look no more, but shut my eyes as the last dreadful act 
was going on, which sent this wretched, guilty soul into the 
presence of God. 

If a public execution is beneficial — and beneficial, it is, no 
doubt, or else the wise laws would not encourage fort}^ thousand 
people to witness it — the next useful thing must be a full de- 
scription of such a ceremon}^, and all its entourages^ and to this 
end the above pages are offered to the I'eader, How does an 



454 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

individual man feel under it? In what way does he observe 
it, — how does he view all the phenomena connected with it, • 

— what induces him, in the first instance, to go and see it, — 
and how is he moved by it afterwards ? The writer has dis- 
carded the magazine "We" altogether, and spoken face to 
face with the reader, recording every one of the impressions 
felt b}' him as honestly as he could. 

I must confess, then (for "I" is the shortest word, and the 
best in this case) , that the sight has left on ni}' mind an extraor- 
dinary- feeling of terror and shame. It seems to me that I 
have been abetting an act of frightful wickedness and violence, 
performed b}' a set of men against one of their fellows ; and I 
pra}' God that it may soon be out of the power of any man in 
England to witness such a hideous and degrading sight. Forty 
thousand persons (say the Sheriffs), of all ranks and degrees, 

— mechanics, gentlemen, pickpockets, members of both Houses 
of Parliament, street-walkers, newspaper- writers, gather to- 
gether before Newgate at a very eaAy hour ; the most part of 
them gi^'e up their natural quiet night's rest, in order to par- 
take of this hideous debaucherj', which is more exciting than 
sleep, or than wine, or the last new ballet, or any other amuse- 
ment the}^ can have. Pickpocket and Peer each is tickled by 
the sight alike, and has that hidden lust after blood which in- 
fluences our race. Government, a Christian government, gives 
us a feast ever}' now and then : it agrees — that is to sa}' — a 
majorit}' in the two Houses agrees, that for certain crimes it is 
necessary' that a man should be hanged b}' the neck. Govern- 
ment commits the criminal's soul to the mercy of God, stating 
that here on earth he is to look for no mercj' ; keeps him for a 
fortnight to prepare, provides him with a clerg3'man to settle 
his religious matters (if there be time enough, but Government 
can't wait) ; and on a Monday morning, the bell tolling, the 
clergyman reading out the word of God, "I am the resurrec- 
tion and the life," "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh 
awa}'," — ,on a Monda}^ morning, at eight o'olock, this man is 
placed under a beam, with a rope connecting it and him ; a 
plank disappears from under him, and those who have paid 
for good places may see the hands of the Government agent. 
Jack Ketch, coming up from his black hole, and seizing the 
prisoner's legs, and pulling them, until he is quite dead — 
strangled. 

Many persons, and well-informed newspapers, say that it 
is mawkish sentiment to talk in this wa}', morbid humanit}'^, 
cheap philanthropy, that any man can get up and preach about. 



IN LONDON. 455 

There is the Observer^ for instance, a paper conspicuous for the 
tremendous sarcasm which distinguishes its articles, and which 
falls cruelW foul of the Morning Herald. ' ' Courvoisier is 
dead," saj's the Observer ; " he died as he had lived — a villain ; a 
lie was in his mouth. Peace be to his ashes. We war not with 
the dead." What a magnanimous Observer! From this, Ob- 
server turns to the Herald^ and sa3'S, •' Fiat justitia mat ccelum." 
So much for the Herald. 

We quote from memor}', and the quotation from the Observer 
possibly is, — De mortuis nil nisi bonum ; or, Omne ignotum pro 
magnijico ; or, Sero nunquam est ad bonos mores via ; or, Ingenuas 
didicisse jideliter artes emollit mores nee sinit esse feros : all of 
which pithy Roman apophthegms would apply just as well. 

" Peace be to his ashes. He died a villain." This is both 
benevolence and reason. Did he die a villain? The Observer 
does not want to destroy him bod}^ and soul, evidently, from 
that pious wish that his ashes should be at peace. Is the next 
Monday but one after the sentence the time necessary for a vil- 
lain to repent in ? May a man not require more leisure — a 
week more — six months more — before he has been able to 
make his repentance sure before Him who died for us all ? — for 
all, be it remembered, — not alone for the judge and jmy, or for 
the sheriffs, or for the executioner who is pulling down the legs 
of the prisoner, — but for him too, murderer and criminal as he 
is, whom we are killing for his crime. Do we want to kill him 
body and soul ? Heaven forbid ! My lord in the black cap 
speciallv prays that heaven ma}^ have mercy on him ; but he 
must be read}' b}' Monday morning. 

Look at the documents which came from the prison of this 
unhapp}^ Courvoisier during the few days which passed between 
his trial and execution. Were ever letters more painful to read? 
At first, his statements are false, contradictory, lying. He has 
not repented then. His last declaration seems to be honest, as 
far as the relation of the crime goes. But read the rest of his 
statement, the account of his personal history, and the crimes 
which he committed in his .young days, — then " how the evil 
thought came to him to put his hand to the work," — it is evi- 
dently the writing of a mad, distracted man. The horrid gal- 
lows is perpetuall}' before him ; he is wild with dread and 
remorse. Clergymen are with him ceaselessly ; religious tracts 
are forced into his hands ; night and day the}' ply him with the 
heinousness of his crime, and exhortations to repentance. 
Read through that last paper of his ; b}^ heaven, it is pitiful 
to read it. See the Scripture phrases brought in now and 



456 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS 

anon ; the peculiar terms of tract-phraseolog^y (I do not wish 
to speak of these often meritorious publications with disre- 
spect) ; one knows too well how such language is learned, — 
imitated from tlie priest at the bedside, eagerl}* seized and ap- 
propriated, and confounded by the poor prisoner. 

But murder is such a monstrous crime (this is the great 
argument), — when a man Inas killed another it is natural that 
he should be killed. Away with 3'our foolish sentimentalists who 
sa}^ no — it is natural. That is the word, and a fine pliilosophi- 
cal opinion it is — philosophical and Christian. Kill a man, 
and you must be killed in turn ; that is the unavoidable sequitur. 
You may talk to a man for a 3'ear upon the subject, and he will 
always replj' to 3^ou, "It is natural, and therefore it must be 
done. Blood demands blood." 

Does it ? The system of compensations might be carried on 
ad infinitum^ — an e3'e for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as by 
the old Mosaic law. But (putting the fact out of the question, 
that we have had this statute repealed b}^ the Highest Author- 
ity), wh}', because 3'ou lose your eye, is that of your opponent 
to be extracted likewise ? Where is the reason for the practice ? 
And yet it is just as natural as the death dictum, founded pre- 
cisel}' upon the same show of sense. Knowing, however, that 
revenge is not onl}'' evil, but useless, we have given it up on all 
minor points. Onl}" to the last we stick firm, contrary though 
it be to reason and to Christian law. 

There is some talk, too, of the terror which the sight of this 
spectacle inspires, and of this we have endeavored to give as 
good a notion as we can in the above pages. I full^^ confess 
that I came away down Snow Hill that morning with a disgust 
for murder, but it was for the murder I saw done. As we made 
our way through the immense crowd, we came upon two little 
girls of eleven and twelve 3^ears : one of them was crying bit- 
terly, and begged, for heaven's sake, that some one would lead 
her from that horrid place. This was done, and the children 
were carried into a place of safety. We asked the elder girl — 
and a very pretty one — what brought her into such a neighbor- 
hood? The child grinned knowingl}', and said, " We've koom 
to see the mon hanged ! " Tender law, that brings out babes 
upon such errands, and provides them with such gratifying 
moral spectacles ! 

This is the 20th of Jul}^ and I ma}^ be permitted for m}^ part 
to declare that, for the last fourteen days, so salutar3^ has the 
impression of the butchery been upon me, I have had the man's 






IN LONDON. 457 

face continuall}' before m}^ e3^es ; that I can see Mr. Ketch at 
this moment, with an easy air, taking the rope from his pocket ; 
that I feel myself ashamed and degraded at the brutal curiosit}^ 
which took me to that brutal sight ; and that I pray to Al- 
mighty God to cause this disgraceful sin to pass from among 
us, and to cleanse our land of blood. 



THE END. 



/ 



